A RAID

For several days our artillery had been bombarding stretches of the front German trenches and cutting the wire entanglements out in front of them preparatory to a big attack. The point actually selected for the raid was treated exactly the same as a score of other points up and down the line. By day the guns poured a torrent of shrapnel on the barbed wire, tearing it to pieces, uprooting the stakes, cutting wide swathes through it. Because the opposing lines were fairly close together, our shells, in order to burst accurately amongst and close over the wire, had to skim close over our own parapet, and all day long the Forward Officers crouched in the front trench, observing and correcting the fall of their shells that shrieked close over them with an appalling rush of savage sound. And while they busied themselves on the wire, the howitzers and heavier guns methodically pounded the front-line trench, the support and communication trenches, and the ground behind them. At night the tempest might slacken at intervals, but it never actually ceased. The guns, carefully laid on “registered” lines and ranges during the day, continued to shoot with absolute accuracy during the darkness—although perhaps “darkness” is a misleading term where the No Man’s Land glowed with light and flickered with dancing shadows from the stream of flares that tossed constantly into the air, soaring and floating, sinking and falling in balls of vivid light. If no lights were flung up for a period from the German line, our front line fired Verey pistol lights, swept the opposing trench and wire with gusts of shrapnel and a spattering hail of machine-gun bullets to prevent any attempt on the enemy’s part to creep out and repair their shattered defences.

Our bombardment had not been carried out unmolested. The German gunners “crumped” the front and support lines steadily and systematically, searched the ground behind, and sought to silence the destroying guns by careful “counter-battery” work. But all their efforts could not give pause to our artillery, much less silence it, and the bombardment raged on by day and night for miles up and down the line. It was necessary to spread the damage, because only by doing so, only by threatening a score of points, was it possible to mislead the enemy and prevent them calculating where the actual raid was to be made.

The hour chosen for the raid was just about dusk. There was no extra-special preparation immediately before it. The guns continued to pour in their fire, speeding it up a little, perhaps, but no more than they had done a score of times in the past twenty-four hours. The infantry clambered out of their trench and filed out through the narrow openings in their own wire entanglements, with the shells rushing and crashing over them so close that instinctively they crouched low to give them clearance. Out in front, and a hundred yards away, the ground was hidden and indistinct under the pall of smoke that curled and eddied from the bursting shrapnel, only lit by sharp, quick-vanishing glare after glare as the shells burst. In the trench the infantry had just left, a Forward Officer peered out over the parapet, fingered his trench telephone, glanced at the watch on his wrist, spoke an occasional word to his battery checking the flying seconds, and timing the exact moment to “lift.”

Out in front a faint whistle cut across the roar of fire. “They’re off,” said the Forward Officer into his ’phone, and a moment later a distinct change in the note of sound of the overhead shells told that the fire had lifted, that the shells were passing higher above his head, to fall farther back in the enemy trenches and leave clear the stretch into which the infantry would soon be pushing.

For a minute or two there was no change in the sound of battle. The thunder of the guns continued steadily, a burst of rifle or machine-gun fire crackled spasmodically. Over the open No Man’s Land the infantry pressed rapidly as the broken ground would allow, pressed on in silence, crouching and dodging over and amongst the shell-holes and craters. Four German “crumps” roared down and past, bursting with shattering roars behind them. A group of light “Whizz-bang” shells rushed and smashed overhead, and somewhere out on the flank an enemy machine-gun burst into a rapid stutter of fire, and its bullets sang whistling and whipping about the advancing line. Men gulped in their throats or drew long breaths of apprehension that this was the beginning of discovery of their presence in the open, the first of the storm they knew would quickly follow. But there were no more shells for the moment, and the rattle of machine-gun fire diminished and the bullets piped thinner and more distant as the gun muzzle swept round. The infantry hurried on, thankful for every yard made in safety, knowing that every such yard improved their chance of reaching the opposing trench, of the raid being successfully accomplished.

Now they were half-way across, and still they were undiscovered. But of a sudden a rifle spat fire through the curling smoke; a machine-gun whirred, stopped, broke out again in rapid and prolonged fire. From somewhere close behind the German line a rocket soared high and burst in a shower of sparks. There was a pause while the advancing men hurried on, stumbling forward in silence. Another rocket leaped, and before its sparks broke downward the German guns burst into a deluge of fire. They swept not only the open ground and trenches where the raiders were attacking, but far up and down the line. Rocket after rocket whizzed up, and to right and left the guns answered with a fire barrage on the British front trench and open ground.

But at the attacking point the infantry were almost across when the storm burst, and the shells for the most part struck down harmlessly behind them. The men were into the fragments of broken wire, and the shattered parapet loomed up under their hands a minute after the first shell burst. Up to this they had advanced in silence, but now they gave tongue and with wild yells leaped at the low parapet, scrambled over and down into the trench. Behind them a few forms twisted and sprawled on the broken ground, but they were no sooner down than running stretcher-bearers pounced on them, lifted and bore them back to the shelter of their own lines. The men with the stretchers paid no more heed to the pattering shrapnel, the rush and crack of the shells, the hiss and whistle of bullets, than if these things had been merely a summer shower of rain.

In the German trench the raiders worked and fought at desperate speed, but smoothly and on what was clearly a settled and rehearsed plan. There were few Germans to be seen and most of these crouched dazed and helpless, with hands over their heads. They were promptly seized, bundled over the parapet, and told by word or gesture to be off. They waited for no second bidding, but ran with heads stooped and hands above their heads straight to the British line, one or two men doubling after them as guards. Some of the prisoners were struck down by their own guns’ shell-fire, and these were just as promptly grabbed by the stretcher-bearers and hurried in under cover. Where any Germans clung to their weapons and attempted to resist the raiders, they were shot down or rushed with the bayonet. Little parties of British sought the communication ways leading back to the support trenches, forced a way down, hurling grenades over as they advanced, halted at suitable spots, and, pulling down sandbags or anything available to block the way, took their stand and beat back with showers of bombs any appearance of a rush to oust them.

Up and down the selected area of front-line trench the raiders spread rapidly. There were several dug-outs under the parapet, and from some of these grey-coated figures crawled with their hands up on the first summons to surrender. These too were bundled over the parapet. If a shot came from the black mouth of the dug-out in answer to the call to surrender, it was promptly bombed. At either end of the area of front line marked out as the limits of the raid, strong parties made a block and beat off the feeble attacks that were made on them. There was little rifle or bayonet work. Bombs played the principal part, and the trench shook to their rapid re-echoing clashes, flamed and flared to their bursts of fire, while overhead the British shells still rushed and dropped a roaring barrage of fire beyond the raided area.

In five minutes all sign of resistance had been stamped out, except at one of the communication-way entrances and at one end of the blocked front line. At both of these points the counter-attack was growing stronger and more pressing. At the communication trench it was beaten back by sheer weight of bombing, but at the trench end, where heavy shells had smashed in the walls, and so rendered the fighting less confined to a direct attack, the defenders of the point were assailed from the German second line, man after man fell fighting fiercely, and there looked to be a danger of the whole trench being flooded by the counter-attack. The prompt action of a young officer saved the situation. It had been no plan of the raid to touch the support or second trench, but, ignoring this understanding, the officer gathered a handful of men, climbed from the front trench, and dashed across the open to the second one. His party pelted the counter-attackers massing there with as many bombs as they could fling in a few seconds, turned and scrambled back to the front line, and fell into the scuffle raging there in a vigorous butt-and-bayonet onslaught.

But now it was time to go. The object of the raid had been carried out, and it was risking all for nothing to wait a moment longer. The word was passed, and half the men climbed out and ran for their own line. A minute later the remainder followed them, carrying the last of their wounded. An officer and two or three men left last, after touching off the fuses connected up with charges placed in the first instance in their duly selected places.

A moment later, with a muffled report, a broad sheet of fire flamed upward from the trench. Three other explosions followed on the heels of the first, and a shower of earth and stones fell rattling about the ground and on the shrapnel-helmets of the retiring raiders, and the earth shuddered under their feet. The German gunners slackened and ceased their fire, probably waiting to hear from the front what this new development meant, or merely checking instinctively at the sight and sound. For a moment the shells ceased to crash over the open ground, the raiders took advantage of the pause, and with a rush were back and over their own parapet again.

Over their heads the British shells still poured shrieking and crashing without pause as they had done throughout.

In military phraseology the raid had been entirely successful, a score of prisoners being taken, a stretch of trench completely destroyed, and few casualties sustained. The raiders themselves summed it up in words more terse but meaning the same—“a good bag, and cheap at the price.”