ARTILLERY PREPARATION

It was the sixth day of the “artillery preparation” for the attack. During the past six days the dispatches on both sides had remarked vaguely that there was “artillery activity,” or “intense fire,” or “occasional increase to drum fire.” These phrases may not convey much to the average dispatch reader, and indeed it is only the Gunners, and especially the Field Batteries in the front gun-line, who understand their meaning to the full.

They had here no picked “battery positions,” because they had been pushed up on to captured ground which they themselves in a previous attack had helped churn to a muddy shell-wrecked wilderness, had blasted bare of any semblance of cover or protection. The batteries were simply planted down in a long line in the open, or at best had the guns sunk a foot or two in shallow pits made by spading out the connecting rims of a group of shell-holes. The gunners, whether serving at the guns or taking their turn of rest, were just as open and exposed as the guns. The gun shields gave a little protection from forward fire of bullets, shrapnel, or splinters, but none from the downward, side, or backward blast of high-explosive shells.

There was no cover or protection for guns or men simply because there had been no time or men to spare for “digging in.” The field guns had been pushed up to their present position just as quickly as the soft ground would allow after the last advance, and since then had been kept going night and day, bringing up and stacking piles of shells and still keeping up a heavy fire. The return fire from the Germans was spasmodic, and not to be compared in volume to ours, and yet against ranks and rows of guns in the bare open it could not fail to be damaging, and a good few of the batteries lost guns smashed and many men and officers killed and wounded.

But the guns, and as far as possible the men, were replaced, and the weight of fire kept up. The men worked in shifts, half of them keeping the guns going while the others ate and rested, and slept the sleep of utter exhaustion in shell-holes near the guns, which continued to bang in running bursts of “battery fire,” or crash out in ear-splitting and ground-shaking four-gun salvos within a dozen or two yards of the sleepers’ heads. The sheer physical labour was cruelly exhausting—the carrying and handling of the shells, the effort to improvise sandbag and broken timber “platforms” under the gun wheels to keep them from sinking in the soft ground, even the mere walking or moving about ankle deep in the sea of sticky mud that surrounded the guns and clung in heavy clogging lumps to feet and legs. But the mental strain must have been even worse in the past six days and nights of constant heavy firing, and of suffering under fire.

Now on this, the sixth and last day of the preparation, the rate of fire along the whole line was worked up to an appalling pitch of violence. The line of the advanced field positions ran in a narrow and irregular belt, at few points more than a couple of thousand yards from the enemy line; the batteries were so closely placed that the left flank gun of one was bare yards from the right flank gun of the next, and in some groups were ranged in double and triple tiers. Up and down this line for miles the guns poured out shells as hard as they could go. Every now and again the enemy artillery would attempt a reply, and a squall of shells would shriek and whistle and crash down on some part or other of our guns’ line, catching a few men here, killing a handful there, smashing or overturning a gun elsewhere—but never stopping or even slacking the tornado of fire poured out by the British line.

Each battery had a set rate of fire to maintain, a fixed number of rounds to place on detailed targets; and badly or lightly mauled or untouched, as might be, each one performed its appointed task. In any battery which had lost many officers and men only a constant tremendous effort kept the guns going. The men relieved from their turn at the guns crawled to the craters, where they had slung a ground sheet or two for shelter from the rain, or had scooped a shallow niche in the side, ate their bully and biscuit, stretched their cramped muscles, crept into their wet lairs, wrapped themselves in wet blankets or coats, curled up and slept themselves into a fresh set of cramps. They were lucky if they had their spell off in undisturbed sleep; most times they were turned out, once, twice, or thrice, to help unload the pack mules which brought up fresh supplies of shells, and man-handle the rounds up from the nearest points the mules could approach over the welter of muddy ground so pitted and cratered that even a mule could not pass over it.

When their relief finished they crawled out again and took their places on the guns, and carried on. By nightfall every man of them was stiff with tiredness, deafened and numb with the noise and shock of the piece’s jarring recoil, weary-eyed and mind-sick with the unceasing twiddling and adjusting of tiny marks to minute scratches and strokes on shell fuses, sights, and range-drums. The deepening dusk was hardly noticed, because the running bursts of flame and light kept the dusk at bay. And dark night brought no rest, no slackening of the fierce rate of fire, or the labour that maintained it.

The whole gun-line came to be revealed only as a quivering belt of living fire. As a gun fired there flamed out in front of the battery a blinding sheet of light that threw up every detail of men and guns and patch of wet ground in glaring hot light or hard black silhouette. On the instant, the light vanished and darkness clapped down on the tired eyes, to lift and leap again on the following instant from the next gun’s spurt of vivid sheeting flame. For solid miles the whole line throbbed and pulsed in the same leaping and vanishing gusts of fire and light; and from either side, from front, and rear, and overhead, came the long and unbroken roaring and crashing and banging and bellowing of the guns’ reports, the passing and the burst of the shells.

So it went on all night, and so it went on into the grey hours of the dawn. As the “zero hour” fixed for the attack approached, the rate of fire worked up and up to a point that appeared to be mere blind ravening fury. But there was nothing blind about it. For all the speed of the work each gun was accurately laid for every round, each fuse was set to its proper tiny mark, each shell roared down on its appointed target. The guns grew hot to the touch, the breeches so hot that oil sluiced into them at intervals hissed and bubbled and smoked like fat in a frying pan, as it touched the metal.

One battery ceased fire for a few minutes to allow some infantry supports to pass through the line and clear of the blast of the guns’ fire, and the gunners took the respite thankfully, and listened to the shaking thunder of the other guns, the rumble and wail and roar of the shells that passed streaming over their heads, sounds that up to now had been drowned out in the nearer bang and crash of their own guns.

As the infantry picked their way out between the guns the “Number One” of the nearest detachment exchanged a few shouted remarks with one of the infantry sergeants.

“Near time to begin,” said the sergeant, glancing at his watch. “Busy time goin’ to be runnin’ this next day or two. You’ll be hard at it, too, I s’pose.”

“Busy time! beginning!” retorted the artilleryman. “I’m about fed up o’ busy times. This battery hasn’t been out of the line or out of action for over three months, an’ been more or less under fire all that time. We haven’t stopped shootin’ night or day for a week, and this last 24 hours we been at it full stretch, hammer an’ tongs. Beginnin’—Good Lord! I’m that hoarse, I can hardly croak, an’ every man here is deaf, dumb, and paralysed. I’m gettin’ to hate this job, an’ I never want to hear another gun or see another shell in my blanky life.”

The infantryman laughed, and hitched his rifle up to move. “I s’pose so,” he said. “An’ I shouldn’t wonder if them Fritzes in the line you’ve been strafin’ are feelin’ same way as you about guns an’ shells—only more so.”

“That’s so,” agreed the Number One, and turned to the fuse-setters, urging them hoarsely to get a stack of rounds ready for the barrage. “We’re just goin’ to begin,” he said, “an’ if this blanky gun don’t hump herself in the next hour or two....”