S.O.S. Stand to! Part 4

"Then why are you not with your men?" I insisted.

"I was lost in the retreat," he answered.

"Why don't you go and look them up?"

"I did, but I can't find them."

Then he asked me if we were getting ammunition up.

"Oh, yes, lots of it," I said.

"When are you going to fire?"

"Oh, pretty soon," I said.

"What are you going to shoot at?" he asked.

I told him we were going to plug the German trenches and the buildings around there, that we had orders to blow them up as they were filled with machine guns. He grinned from ear to ear, saying, "Good! Good!

Shoot them all! Which ones you shoot first? I want to see them fall."

I pointed out the ones my battery was going to demolish and his big white teeth were exposed in another grin, as he nodded approvingly, and walked off.

That same afternoon my gun leveled the buildings a.s.signed to me for demolishment and knowing beyond all shadow of a doubt that they were filled with men and machine guns, I watched through the gla.s.ses to see the gray-clad inmates popping out of the doors and windows. Judge of my astonishment! Not a solitary soul left the building my gun had destroyed. I watched each one of them in turn and in turn was awarded nothing for my pains. From others, however, hundreds of men rushed and as they scurried away our guns shrapneled them, dropping them by the score.

A sort of a subconscious connection between my conversation with the Algerian and the effect of my gun fire found lodging in the back of my head, but it was not until later that it became a direct consciousness.

Another thing that set me thinking was what seemed to me to be an undue familiarity between this Algerian trooper and our farmer; he had the entree of the house, apparently could go and come as he pleased, drinking coffee with the inmates, sleeping there nights and making himself generally at home. I didn't think much of it at the time, but later events made these trivialities very significant indeed.

The bombardment was now commencing to have its effect on me, and McLean and I were both tired out; we were dead beat and looked around for a quiet spot where we could rest. Billy McLean was my especial pal ever since I had set foot in France.

"Here is what the doctor ordered," he said, as we went off down the hedge a bit and came to a little opening in the bush into which we both crawled. It requires no effort for a man who has been sustaining the sound, shock and work of a bombardment, to fall asleep anywhere, any time, and we were soon Murphyized, as Mac expressed it.

The rain now commenced falling heavily and in the midst of our slumbers, an orderly happened along and woke me up. I gave Mac a shove and he too woke up. We were drenched and made for the barn. We found the Old Man there with a lantern and told him we were going up in the loft, but he scowled and said we were not to go. "To h.e.l.l with you!"--and up we went, finding five or six of the boys there taking advantage of the lull to s.n.a.t.c.h an hour's sleep. We quickly followed suit, getting hold of some straw and grain bags for a bed, and resumed our interrupted slumbers.

In the midst of our dreams "S.O.S. Stand to!" was ordered, but we did not hear. One of our fellows, as we later learned, came running up to the farmhouse and asked the farmer if he had seen any of our men.

"No," he scowled, "there are none here."

When we had our sleep out we made for the guns. It did not take us long to see that a pretty thorough strafing had been going on, yet so dead beat to the utter exhaustion point were we, that we had failed to hear them.

"Where the h.e.l.l were you fellows?" asked one.

"Asleep up there in the barn," said I; "why didn't you call us?"

"I did, I asked that old blankety-blank and he told me he hadn't seen any of you fellows around there."

"Well," said I, "he knew that Mac and I were up there, because we told him we were going, although he didn't want to let us go."

Here the incident dropped and was forgotten for the time. That afternoon Fritz attempted to come over our way and on a "Stand to" we jumped to the guns and drove him back, sending across 200 expressions of our good will in record time. Then we "stood down." Following this we went through the usual routine of cleaning up our pet and making her ready for the next visitation, and while working away, friend farmer came along with one of his cows, a large white animal, leading it with a rope and permitting her to graze. He walked along in front of my gun where it stopped and grazed awhile; going in like manner in front of each of the guns. Then he led the animal over to the other side of the house, where it grazed in front of the French .75's.

In the meantime we were working hard, getting our pets in shape, and someone asked who would volunteer for water. We were all dirty, thirsty, greasy and tired, and I offered to go. I ambled over to the farmhouse, stopping to speak to the Captain for a moment on the way, when I heard a sh.e.l.l explode; it had demolished No. 2 gun.

"Stand to!" yelled the Captain; then to the farmer, "Take that d.a.m.ned cow away." He hurried the cow off and put it in the barn, but he had no sooner gone than Kr-kr-kr-p! Kr-kr-kr-p! and the Captain and I were knocked off our feet. The water bottle was broken and I did not take time to get another but made for the guns. They were hammering our batteries thoroughly now and I was told to take shelter. I ran over to the farmhouse and asked the farmer's wife for a cup of coffee,--to sell me a cup, which she refused; in fact, her husband would not permit any of us to enter the house again. Then a smothering fire smashed the French battery, the destruction being so accurate and complete that it was done while I was asking and being refused the coffee! Just leaving the house, I met one of the French captains. "Did you notice anything peculiar in the farmer's actions?" he asked me; "I mean, with his white cow?"

"I told him I hadn't noticed anything peculiar, that I had noticed he had taken his white cow out in front of our battery, grazing her there just before the battery was shot up.

"Did the cow stop in front of your gun?"

"Yes, it stopped before each one of them."

"So it did at ours," he said.

"_Merci_ Monsieur, you will hear from this." And he left in a hurry. He phoned the gendarmes in the city of Ypres and in less than half-an-hour they came. They entered the farmhouse and searched it thoroughly.

Upstairs they found parts of a heliograph lamp and a complete telephone apparatus; there was also in his stove a system that had been inaugurated for forcing up a shower of sparks; this apparatus had been found in the houses of a number of spies who had paid the penalty for their work. Then they made a search of the cellar in which were found hundreds of tins of beef and jam, all of which had come from our rations, and then was explained the mysterious disappearance of our grub. There was no trace to be found of our Algerian trooper; he had made a hasty exit.

Friend farmer and his wife were arrested, taken away with the children and placed in the coop, and there the traitorous couple got their deserts--they were taken to the square and shot.

After they had gone we made ourselves at home in the building, and the comforts that awaited us there made us feel almost glad that they had turned out to be spies. Among the rations we found that they had taken stuff that had been purloined from other units as far back as three months before. After a thorough ransacking and a feed that filled us to our heart's content, we made for the battery, being greeted with a fresh outburst on our arrival, and under the fire we pulled our remaining guns away to another hedge 200 yards off, and waited for the storm to settle.

While lying there the brains of one of our geniuses got to working and his ideas were quickly resolved into action. We went down to the barn, took a couple of wagons, taking off the wheels and the poles, and made up three dummy guns and placed them in the spot we had left, and in a few minutes' time we had the satisfaction of seeing Fritz spend three or four hundred good sh.e.l.ls on our dummy battery.

A consuming thirst was parching my mouth and I took a chance and ran along the open to the house for a drink. Then it was that the disadvantageous side of our good work with the dummy guns was exemplified; just as I was stepping out of the door, a sh.e.l.l tore a hole in one corner of the building, knocking it out as clean as if it had been drilled.

The customary methods employed by the Germans to get information as to our guns, our troops, our supplies around Ypres, was to send a disguised soldier to the different farmhouses and threaten them with instant demolition by their guns if they did not furnish the information sought for, and thus did Fritz make good his promise to the farmer. By reason of our dummy guns and the strafing they got, and the fact that our guns still were firing, he believed that the farmer had given him a bunco steer, and he lost no time in making good his word.

Remaining in the hedge for a few hours, we dug holes for the guns, covered them with tarpaulins and gra.s.s on top, giving them the usual scenic shelter. We did this work in the open but only one man at a time exposed; it was as much as life was worth for more than one to be seen working. That evening, in the midst of our meal at cookhouse,--"Stand to!" and we raced for our pets. When the concert was well under way, Munsey noticed a light three or four hundred yards off that was acting somewhat peculiarly; it would flare up and down oddly and seemed to be in a farmhouse straight at our rear, but not much attention was paid to it at the time. Next morning Munsey and I were in the cookhouse, trying to moisten a couple of hardtack biscuits with what juice we could extract from a piece of bacon rind, when an airplane hummed overhead and the attention of one of our anti-aircraft guns was immediately diverted to the bird. The cookhouse had formerly been a French dressing station, dismantled by the fire of those devils that know no law of G.o.d or man, composed of three huts in a row made of half-inch board. While eating, one of our own sh.e.l.ls, a shrapnel, that had been sent up at a German stork and did not explode, dropped squarely into the middle of the cookhouse, frightened the cook out of his wits and hit the dixies, scattering them around our feet. "Stand to!" and we made our way carefully, keeping out of sight as much as possible from the watching bird overhead.

When I got to the gun the sh.e.l.l fire was commencing to get dangerously close. "By G.o.d, there must be somebody giving our battery away," said Munsey. A number of our men had been wounded at this time and the airplane still buzzing above, made it impossible for us to fire, and we got a "Stand down!"

"Come on over," Munsey proposed, "and we'll see what's in that building where I saw the light." We found a family of civilians living there and they were at once very solicitous about giving us coffee. "Never mind the coffee," said Munsey; "we have come to examine the house." The old man seemed quite willing to have us do so and pointed the way upstairs, starting himself to go out the door. Munsey grabbed him by the arm,--"Come along and show us the way." He indicated that we could find the way ourselves, but my mate was insistent and he forced the old man along and upstairs we went.

At first nothing resulted from our thorough search, but Munsey's eye lighted on an Algerian serge lying in the corner of the room, and almost at the same time I noticed some bricks in the chimney that seemed to be loose. An old table in the middle of the room I pulled over to the chimney, tugged at some of the brick that I had noticed, and the whole thing caved in, part of a heliograph outfit falling out. The old fellow made a dart for the door, but was peremptorily intercepted. "d.a.m.n you, stay where you are!" I pulled out the rest of the stuff; there was a complete heliograph apparatus, and a little red cap, such as the Algerians wear, satisfying us both that the man doing the work used the uniform of an Algerian.

On leaving the room, carrying the stuff with us and going down stairs, we saw a box against the wall and I heard a funny noise from it as if it contained something alive. I pulled it out and found it full of pigeons.

"Who owns these?" I asked.

"An Algerian soldier left them there," he answered.

We then examined the cellar and entire bas.e.m.e.nt, but found nothing further. We took the old fellow over to the gendarme who immediately took charge of him, and returned to the battery where we imparted the news of our find. It was the consensus of opinion that the spy was the farmer himself, and that the Algerian uniform was a blind. We were chatting away, discussing the matter, when the sh.e.l.ls commenced flying as thick as peas in a pod; so swift and smas.h.i.+ng was the fusillade that for awhile I thought h.e.l.l's gate had opened wide. In less than no time one of our guns was knocked out and, getting a "Stand to!" we replied as fast as our legs and arms and heads would work.

The excellent quality of the work that Fritz did here made the fellows unanimous that his information came from the farmer. Presently the duel cooled down and we resumed our chat.

About a hundred yards off from the farmhouse where we had found the heliograph and Algerian uniform, was a windmill of the kind commonly seen in the farmhouses of the country, with large wings, and it happened that while firing, one of the boys, Boxer, noticed that the mill was going around in an irregular fas.h.i.+on,--going first one way and then another, and then stopping, and he called our attention to it and we all noticed it, and almost simultaneously with our observation of the mill, four sh.e.l.ls came over, knocking another of our guns into uselessness and wiping out the crew, and after we got "Stand down!" and had cleaned up, Boxer suggested that we go over and see what was in the windmill.

Together we went, going first to the house, and found the children crying with fright; some of them tried to tell us something, but we couldn't make out what they were saying. We crossed over to the windmill and a phenomenon indeed met our eyes,--the wheel was turning in the opposite direction from that in which the wind was blowing. We started up the steps and--Ping! Ping! and Boxer fell with an oath and a bullet in his leg. I a.s.sisted him to the farmhouse and then scooted over and communicated with the O.C. I also informed a French battery that had been terrifically sh.e.l.led.

In the meantime a stretcher had been sent for, and Boxer was brought back to the dressing station, where he had his wound dressed, which luckily turned out to be slight.

That night I was filled full of the spirit of adventure and I wanted to visit the windmill again. I got a pal to go with me and endeavored to make it, but the flares were steadily burning and the snipers were so busy we had to lie low. Again I went to the French battery and told the officer commanding of my suspicions about the windmill. A smile of intelligence and gratefulness lighted up his fine face. "Monsieur, we shall see what we shall see," and he ordered a sh.e.l.l into the heart of the structure, bringing it down in splinters. Then we made for the ruins and found the body of a man dressed in an Algerian uniform; I looked him over carefully; he was the artist I had met in the farmhouse at our former station.