when a man has gone over the top of a front line trench in an attack on the enemy, he has reached the stage in his career as a soldier at which the title, "veteran," may honorably be applied to him.
for, to climb out of your burrow where you have been living like an earthworm into god's clear daylight in plain view of enemy snipers, machine-gunners, and artillerymen, and, under the same conditions, to start across no man's land toward the hun in his well-protected and fortified trenches, is indeed to earn that distinction.
many there are who have courted death in this form, again and again, and "got away with it." but it is a good deal like trying your luck at rouge et noir in the casino at monte carlo. the odds are against you, and if you keep at it long enough you are almost mathematically certain to lose out in the end.
the boys know this as well as you and i. in spite of that knowledge, over the top they go again and again, by day and by night, with a smile on their lips, blood in their eyes, and joy in their hearts at the thought of revenging themselves upon the despicable hun for his breaking of all the laws of civilization, for his utter disregard of the principle that "between nation and nation, as between man and man, lives the one great law of right."
attacks in which the men go over the top are of various kinds and on different scales. the commonest are simply raids in which a small sector of enemy lines is the object. by them we endeavor to obtain prisoners for purposes of identification of the troops opposing us, while at the same time we depress the morale of the enemy.
then there are the immense attacks, called pushes, in which we mean to push back the enemy, take possession of his lines, consolidate and hold them, killing, taking prisoners, and putting hors de combat as many as we can in the process. these pushes are always on a greater scale and require thorough organization and preparation to be successful. if they should fail, our last condition is worse than our first. we have not only wasted all our immense preparations but we have lowered the spirits of our own men, and raised and encouraged the fighting spirit of the enemy.
the man who is sitting comfortably in his library five or six thousand miles from the scene of battle notes on the map on his wall that it is only five inches from the firing line of the allies to the rhine. he may decide that it should be an easy matter to bring up a few million troops, break through the enemy lines, push a million men through the gap, cut the communications of the opposing forces, hurl the enemy back into the rhine, and make him sue for peace.
on paper, and with the aid of a vivid imagination, this may look easy. in reality the preparations for a great advance are enormous. for weeks before the push, even for months, the staffs of battalion, brigade, division, corps, and army are planning it.
dummy trenches are laid out from aerial photographs, taken by aviators, and dummy advances are practiced with all the details as in real advances. our information must be so complete that we know even where certain dugouts are in the enemy lines, and who occupies them. this knowledge comes from prisoners and deserters. raids are put on to know what troops are opposing us by the identification of prisoners. medical arrangements have to be completed so as to handle the hundreds or thousands of casualties that must occur.
immense guns must be brought up, and millions of shells must be piled along the roads and stored in dumps ready for use during battle. water arrangements have to be made to supply pure water to the troops when they cross into enemy territory, for the enemy may have destroyed or poisoned the water supplies as they retired. extra food rations and equipment must be supplied the men. places of confinement for the hoped-for prisoners must be built. and, finally, thousands of extra troops must be brought up and trained for the attack.
the above are only a few of the preparations that must be made, for the details are multitudinous. the most difficult thing is that these preparations must be carried out so far as possible without the enemy's knowledge. for he also has his aeroplane scouts taking photographs and looking about for information, his observation balloons and his spies, his raids and his prisoners. it is even possible that we might have a deserter who betrayed us to him, though one feels that this must be exceedingly rare.
if the armchair critic has read the above he will perhaps realize a little more vividly than he has done before how difficult advances are and why it is more easy to talk of getting the enemy on the run than to actually do it. once he has started to retreat and you to advance, your difficulties multiply and go on increasing in direct proportion to the distance that you get from your base of supplies. your munitions, food and water must be transported from the rear over strange roads pulverized by shell fire, while your enemy is backing into greater supplies hourly.
one of the most difficult propositions is to keep the different parts of your immense organization in communication with battalion, brigade, and divisional headquarters. many different methods are used.
perhaps the most reliable is by runner, or courier, on foot. the runner has an arduous, dangerous, and often thankless, task, which he performs as a rule patiently, bravely and tirelessly. the telephone, telegraph, and power buzzer—the latter being sometimes used without wires, at a distance as great as 4000 yards—are commonly employed, though they have many disadvantages. the first of these is the difficulty in installing them in the face of heavy shelling and counter attacks by the enemy. secondly, they are likely to be put out of commission, their wires being destroyed by shells. finally, their messages are often picked up through the earth by your opponents with some apparatus invented for the purpose.
there are the semaphore and flashlight methods of signaling, and signaling by flares, all naturally very limited in variety of use, the latter particularly so. but flares are of great service when a hurried artillery retaliation is desired, s.o.s. flares then being sent up. the wireless apparatus on aeroplanes and the throwing of flares by aviators are also used to good account. but there are times when all these different methods are found wanting. through force of circumstance a battalion or company may be completely isolated, and then it is that the last and least employed method, that of carrier pigeons, is resorted to. in each battalion are a couple or more specially trained carrier pigeons, and to speak of the "o.c. pigeons" is a standing joke. the pigeons are rarely employed. it may be almost forgotten that they are with a unit, as was practically the case of one battalion at the somme of which the following story is told:
the commanding officer had waited in vain for hours for some message as to the success or failure of a show one company was putting on. he was impatiently striding up and down when a poor little carrier pigeon fluttered into his presence. he hurriedly caught it, and untied from its leg the following message: "i am bally well fed up carrying this damned bird about. you take it for a while."
after all this preparatory stage is completed, when transport, artillery preparation, communication, maps, training, dummy advances, extra rations, water, medical supplies and equipment, are in order, the next move is to get all troops taking part in the advance into the most advantageous positions, unknown to the germans. the men are well fed, given extra water bottles, "iron rations" are in their kits—that is, bully beef and biscuit—they are equipped only in fighting dress. by night they are marched into the trenches from which they are to go over the top, and after a few hours of rest, broken by shell fire, the zero hour, or hour of attack, arrives.
just before the great advance in which the canadians took vimy ridge, that hill consecrated by the graves of thousands of french, british, and canadian soldiers, our brigade had made all these arrangements. we were to march into the line on easter saturday and go over the top the following morning at daybreak. but at the last moment we were delayed by a brigade order, due to information obtained from a german deserter, information that said that the huns knew that we were to attack on easter sunday.
while sitting in my tent i was visited by officers on various missions, some to get dressings to carry in their pocket, dressings that they neglected getting till the very last moment; others to tell me that such and such a man was afflicted with that grievous malady, "cold feet," and if he should visit me on pretension of illness, to bear this fact in mind; and again others with no object but a pleasant word.
among those who always had a humorous word and a smile, and whose honest eyes always looked at one fearlessly through his gold-rimmed spectacles, was lieutenant henderson—"old pop," as the younger officers always called him. after his usual courteous and kindly greeting we joked about the possibility, or rather the probability, of some of us not coming back from the great advance. no doubt he voiced the opinion of most of us when he said with a hearty laugh—
"you know, doc, the main objection i have to death is that it is so d—— permanent."
the following day "old pop" was no more. his jolly laugh and his voice with its pleasant burr were to be heard no longer in our ranks. he had met death while bravely leading his men across no man's land like the gallant scotch gentleman that he was.
something which struck me then, and which still impresses me as extraordinary in looking back at it, was the buoyant, cheerful, optimistic spirit in which our army of citizen-soldiers looked forward to the day when we were to take part in one of the greatest battles in history. we knew it was to be a fearful and magnificent trial of strength out of which many of us would never return to the people and the lands we loved. and yet all awaited it with a gay, hopeful, undaunted optimism, asking naught but the opportunity, anticipating nothing but victory. it is unbelievable that the blind obedience of a militaristic kaiserism can ever subdue a soldiery who so freely offer their all on the altar of liberty.
