Read Ebook: The Black Watch: A Record in Action by Cassells Joe

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Ebook has 628 lines and 50267 words, and 13 pages

Thus began for us the Battle of the Oise.

We had little hope of any support. We knew we had to fight it out alone, and there was little enough ammunition. I was running and ducking for the next bit of cover from behind which I could use my rifle, when a shell exploded behind me. It threw me from my feet but I was unhurt and as I jumped up I heard a crashing and splintering a few feet away. One of the horses on an ammunition wagon had been struck. He was plunging on the ground, terrifying his team mate and kicking the wagon to pieces. The transport officer, C. R. B. Henderson, drew his revolver and shot the animal.

The Uhlans must have had reinforcements for they were getting bolder. The bullets were cutting up little spurts of dust and turf all about us. They were singing overhead like a gale in the ropes and spars of a transport at sea. The Germans were firing at the ammunition wagon in the hope of blowing it up.

I was just about to run for cover again when I saw Lieut. Henderson--he who had shot the transport horse--walk calmly up and cut the dead one from the traces. I didn't care about being killed, but I couldn't leave this officer, who was standing there as though he were on parade, except that his hands were working ten times as fast as they ever did at drill. Together we got the dead animal free and harnessed the lieutenant's horse to the wagon. We used one of the lieutenant's spiral puttees to mend the cut and broken harness. The driver of the ammunition wagon was holding the head of the other horse, shaking his fist at the Germans, and swearing at them with a heavy Scotch burr.

Men were running past us like rabbits. Some of them were tumbling like rabbits, too, when a steel-nosed bullet found its mark. I saw others stoop, just long enough to get an arm under the shoulders of a comrade and then drag him along. A few lay still and a single look into their faces showed that it would be useless to carry them. The running men dropped behind stones, hillocks, trees--anything that was likely to afford cover and stop bullets--and their rifles snapped angrily at the Germans whose fire was getting heavier, but who still did not dare an open attack.

At last the harness was ready. The ammunition driver leaped to his seat and the wagon went careening toward the ravine, swaying crazily, with a storm of shots tearing up the turf around its wheels. We needed that wagon badly. In a moment it would be over the crest of the rise and we would be sure of that much ammunition to fight with.

"Get on to the wagon, sir," I shouted to the officer, as it dashed forward; but he did not heed me.

"In a second we shall be where we can fight them off," was all he said.

A Uhlan's horse, with empty saddle, galloped up to us. I seized the dangling reins.

"Mount him, sir," I shouted. He took the reins from my hand and attempted to leap into the saddle. The horse was cut and bleeding, and unmanageable from terror. He backed toward the ammunition wagon, which had not yet made the ridge, dragging the officer with him. I followed.

Just as we thus neared the wagon, a shell exploded close at hand. The wagon humped up in the middle as if it had been made of whalebone. It rocked from side to side, almost upsetting. Then it settled back upon its wrecked wheels. A high explosive shell had struck directly under it. The two horses fell, dead from shrapnel or shock, and the driver toppled from his seat, dead, between them, a red smear across his face.

The small-arms ammunition in the wagon had not been exploded. The doors of the wagon were thrown open by the concussion of the shell, causing the bandoliers of cartridges to scatter. The officer motioned to me to help distribute the ammunition to our men as they ran past; upon finishing this task we joined the last of our party and were very soon over the crest. We had only a few machine guns, but we got them in place. The Uhlans were charging across the field.

Our attention was then attracted to a heavy fire, directed from some unknown quarter upon a near-by field in which was confined a large herd of light brown cattle, their colour identical with that of our khaki uniforms. The animals were milling about madly; a dozen of them already were down and others were falling each moment. Here was one of the humours of war. We laughed, believing that the Germans were firing upon the dying beasts, mistaking them for us--"The Ladies from Hell," as they called us.

The Scots Greys, which regiment had come up at this critical moment to occupy the high ground on our right flank about six hundred yards away, through the fierceness of their enfilading fire, managed to keep the enemy at a standstill and so allowed the Black Watch to retreat to safety.

We owed our lives to kind fate in bringing the Scots Greys to our timely aid, and to them all honour! But for them we should have met the fate of the Munster Fusiliers.

Crawling on their bellies, some of our men went out and brought in those of the Black Watch who were lying wounded. The others we left, for their own men would be there presently. For us, it was retreat again. After traversing ditches, ravines and barbed-wire fences, we finally assembled on the road. The artillery was beginning to pound once more. We had to trudge on, watching for the next attack, planting one bleeding foot before another, with nobody knew how many days of forced marching before us--marching to let the Russians get to Berlin. I don't think anything else would have induced us to resume our retreat after the brush with the Uhlans.

At evening we found ourselves at the village of Oise about six miles from the abovementioned scene. As we arrived at the bridge over the River Oise, the engineers who were on the other side, and who had fused the bridge, shouted to us to keep back, but our colonel gave us the order to double. We had cleared the bridge by about only two hundred yards, when it blew up into atoms!

We were so tired that night that I could have slept on a bed of nails, points up, but we had not been in our billets very long when we were ordered out, as the outpost had reported the approach of Uhlans in considerable numbers.

We were half asleep as we ran down into the street to our allotted posts. One of the first persons we encountered in the town was a Frenchman, raving mad. We asked him what was the matter, but he could not reply. He jibbered like an ape; his twitching lips slavered and foamed. Some of his neighbours took him in hand and led him away. One of them told us his story:

"The Prussians came in here yesterday. There was no one to resist them. They posted sentries. Then those who were not on duty broke into cellars. Casks of wine were rolled up into the streets, and, where squads gathered together, there were piles of bottles. The soldiers did not stop to pull the corks. They knocked off the necks of the bottles and filled their aluminum cups with red wine and white, mixing one type with another, and swilling it in as fast as they could drink. Dozens of them fell in the gutters, drunk. Others reeled through the village, abusing and insulting men and women alike. If a man resisted, he was shot. This poor fellow, whom you have seen, was in his door yard with his wife. A Prussian seized her about the waist. She struggled. He crushed her to him with his brutish arm. His companions, all drunk, laughed and jeered. The woman's clothes were ripped from her shoulders in her struggle. Meanwhile others bound the husband to one of his own fruit trees, so that he could not escape the horror of it. One--more drunken, more bestial than the others--slashed off the woman's breasts and threw them to a dog. The woman died."

This of itself was enough to have made us rage against the enemy whom hitherto we had regarded as an honourable foe, but it was not all. I, with other members of my own company, came upon a nail driven into the wall of a barn from which hung, by the mouth, the lifeless form of a baby. The child was dead when we found it, but it had died hanging from the rusty nail. I know it had, because I saw upon the wall the marks of finger-nails where the baby had clawed and scratched. And besides, a dead body would not have bled. An officer ordered the removal of the child's body.

I do not tell these things for the sake of the horror of them. I would rather not tell them. I have spent months trying to forget them. Now that I have recalled them, I wake in the night so horrified that I cannot move. But to relate them may serve one useful purpose. There are those in America, as there were in England, who believed that war to repel invasion was justified, but who were not enthusiastic for war abroad. America entered the war after her patience was absolutely exhausted, and Americans should be devoutly thankful that they can fight abroad and not have to endure the presence of a single Prussian soldier on American soil. What we saw and learned in Guise galvanized our weary bodies to new efforts against the vandals whom we were fighting. With clenched teeth and curses we turned to fight again.

The Uhlans got into the outskirts of the town and cut down a number of our men, but, inch by inch, as they drove toward the centre of the village, our resistance became stiffer and stiffer. It was like a nightmare. The charging horses, the gruff shouts of the enemy, the groans of the men who fell beside me, were like their counterparts in a dream. My finger pressed the trigger of the rifle feverishly. Even when I saw the men I fired at topple from their saddles and sprawl on the cobblestones, I had only a dull sense that I had scored a hit.

A few of the enemy escaped down side streets, and a number of them remained lying where they had been shot. While we were on our way back to quarters, a Frenchman came up out of his basement and motioned us to follow him. We went into the cellar and found half a dozen Prussians lying there dead drunk. We made them prisoners and sent them to headquarters.

I had about got settled in the stable where I was billeted, when orders came to "stand to." No more sleep that night. We took the road and left La Grange behind us just as the sun was pinking the sky. It was Sunday, and, although we knew war was no respecter of the Sabbath, we had not been in the field long enough to get the idea quite out of our heads that Sunday, somehow, in the nature of things, was a little easier than other days. When we halted in a ravine at about ten o'clock in the morning, after marching four hours, we thought after all that it was going to be an easier day. I was on outpost duty on a side road a little way from the main thoroughfare we had been following.

Suddenly an infernal racket broke out over to our left. First there came a few scattered cracks of rifle fire. Then I could hear clip firing and the rattle of machine guns. I learned later that the Scots Greys and the 12th Lancers had come across about seven thousand Germans resting in a wide gully. The Greys and the Lancers, catching them unawares by cutting down their sentries who had no opportunity even to give the alarm--charged through them, then back again. Three times they repeated their performance, while some of our brigade got on to the flanks and poured in such a rapid fire that the Prussians had no opportunity to re-form to meet each repetition of the attack. The details do not matter, but they made up for the annihilation of the Munster Fusiliers.

In the newspaper accounts of the campaign this incident was described as the "Great St. Quentin Charge," in which, it was asserted, the Black Watch participated, holding onto the stirrups of the Scots Greys. This bit of colouring was an inaccuracy. We aided the Greys and the Lancers with rifle and machine-gun fire only. When the firing ceased and the Greys and the Lancers came cantering past, we learned from them the details of the Battle of "St. Quentin."

It was quite natural that some of us Scots should find it difficult to make ourselves familiar with these phrases. However, we were all willing to try. One strapping Highlander, weary and footsore but daunted by nothing, practised the phrases dutifully, though the French words were almost lost in the encounter with his native Scotch. We chuckled, but he merely glowered at us indignantly, and then went to take his place on sentry go. Two Frenchmen came along in a wagon. The Highlander blocked their way and sternly uttered what he conceived to be the phrase he had been told to use. The Frenchmen sat mystified. There was a roar of laughter when the Highlander, losing patience, shouted: "Pass us if ye daur!" Then his sergeant came to the rescue.

These two Frenchmen in the wagon were the last refugees to pass. Soon afterward, from my station farther down the road, I heard a clatter of hoofs and caught a glimpse of Uhlans' helmets. I had barely time to pass the word to the man on the next post and to jump behind a log before they came into view. They were riding, full gallop into our lines, apparently having abandoned ordinary scouting precautions in their eagerness to strike where and when they might against our worn and lacerated forces. We, now, had fought so long that we fought mechanically. Over my protecting log, I aimed at the leading horseman as precisely and carefully as if I had been at rifle practice. When I pulled the trigger he tumbled into the road, rolled over awkwardly, and lay still. I did not feel as if I had killed a man. I felt only a mild sense of satisfaction with the accuracy of my aim. Bitter hate for the Huns had sprung in the heart of every one of us after what we had that day seen of their savagery.

I had got my Uhlan at, perhaps, seventy yards. His fall checked the squad's advance for a moment only. The man nearest grasped at the bridle of the dead man's horse but missed it. On they all came, galloping recklessly and yelling, the riderless horse leading by a half dozen lengths. As they rode, they fired in my direction, but their bullets went wide. I felt real compunction as I aimed at the head of the leading horse--the one whose rider I had shot down with only a sense of satisfaction. I could hear our men crashing through the bushes by the road as they came to my support. I fired. My bullet must have struck the riderless horse in the brain, for he fell instantly, sprawled out in the path of the galloping Huns behind. The horses of the leaders stumbled over the fallen animal. A rattle of shots from our men completed the confusion of the Uhlans. They turned their horses and galloped away--some back along the road, others across the fields. Several fell under our fire; how many we had no time to ascertain.

After that little affair we organized our position for a somewhat better defence. Leaving a few scouts, far advanced, we stationed our men in easy touch with each other and then cut down a number of trees and telegraph poles and barricaded the road with them. There were sixteen of us in the post near this barricade, concealed from view and able to communicate with each other in whispers. The hours dragged on to midnight and past. We were weary to the bone--half dead for want of sleep--but we dared not relax our vigilance for an instant.

The surrounding country was dense with woods. The moon was almost new, so consequently the poles were quite invisible a few yards away.

At about one o'clock in the morning I heard something crackling through the brush on the side road. My bayonet was fixed and I was ready to fire. The crackling came nearer. I crept stealthily forward to meet whatever it was. Presently a man stepped into the road. "Halt!" I cried. He halted at once, and gave the word "Friend." It was one of our sentries with a message that Uhlans were coming along the road. Three men were farther down the road; they had hidden so that the Uhlans would pass them, the sentry said.

A section of us concealed ourselves--and waited. Presently the Uhlans came into sight, proceeding cautiously. Half of us were instructed to withhold fire until the Prussians should reach the barricade. The remainder began to fire. The horsemen scattered to each side of the road and returned the fire, but as we were not discernible, the shots went wild. I judged that they numbered about fifty. We dropped a few of them. They were becoming enraged--their fire ineffective. They mounted; and the leader spurred his horse, and, followed by the others, galloped in our direction. Their carbines spat red flashes into the night. Their bullets were coming closer now, because they could determine where we were lying in the ditches at the side of the road from the flashes of our rifles.

This might well arouse against us the criticism of those who never witnessed atrocities committed by the Huns, but you must remember that our blood had not come down to normal from the effects of the sights we ourselves had come across.

At last, we leaped out to make prisoners of the trapped Uhlans. Those who could, bolted back in the direction they came from, but it was a sure thing that twelve of them were missing when the roll was called.

One might consider that a night's work, but it wasn't.

It was now my turn for sentry go on the main road, which was still open for vehicles of our staff. This was a post where it was thought that, to use an American phrase, there would be "nothing doing"; yet it was here that I came face to face with one of the war's finest examples of Teutonic over-assurance--boldness that would have been splendid had it not been stupid.

After I had been at my new post an hour, it then being near three o'clock in the morning, a motor car came swiftly toward me. I had been warned that I might expect staff officers to pass, and this, I thought, was undoubtedly some of them--otherwise the car would have advanced slowly. I stepped into the road and awaited its approach. As it neared me I saw that the two officers it contained wore the uniforms of the British staff. I could see the red tabs on their collars.

There were two telegraph poles across the road near my post. Remembering this, I showed myself and called for the chauffeur to halt. He checked the car's speed but brought it ahead slowly. I shouted for the countersign. I was waiting for the occupants of the car to give it, intending to explain to them that they would have to stop until I called some one to help me remove the telegraph poles, when there was a sudden grinding of gears and the car shot ahead, full speed. I yelled a warning about the poles but the words left my lips at about the moment when the car bounced over them.

Until that time I had no suspicion that the occupants of the car were not what they seemed. Even then, the manner in which they "rushed" my post seemed to me only due to some inexplicable misunderstanding. But I had marched, and fought, and gone sleepless and hungry until I was little more than a mechanical soldier. I was able to realize only that somebody, for some reason, had ignored my challenge and rushed a sentry post. I swung my rifle in the direction of the car, aimed accurately , and pulled the trigger. The noise of an exploding tire followed the crack of my weapon. The car skidded, twisted for a moment, and then went on--faster than ever.

My shot aroused our outpost. The alarm was given to the first of the connecting sentries and passed along quickly until it reached our company headquarters, on the roadside opposite to a ch?teau in which Brigade Staff headquarters had been established. Men half awake, tumbled into the roadway preparing to fire on something or somebody--they didn't know what. It was useless for the car to attempt to rush the crowd. Again the chauffeur checked it, this time bringing it to a full stop. One of the occupants demanded sharply of the sentry in front of the ch?teau:

"What is the meaning of this? Are there nothing but blockheads about here? We have been fired on while looking for Brigade headquarters. Somebody should be court-martialled for this."

The sentry saluted them and admitted them to the grounds of the ch?teau.

Their car had disappeared within the gates when I came running down the road and informed my company commander what had happened. He instantly ordered our men to surround the ch?teau and rushed in himself, following the car up the avenue leading through the grounds. The "staff officers" had abandoned their car in the shadow of a clump of trees and were seeking to escape over the garden wall when our men captured them. One of them, speaking English without a trace of accent, still tried to "bluff" our men who seized him, and his assumed indignation was so convincing that, but for the direct orders from the company commander, the men might have released him, believing him really an officer of our forces. Each of the two wore the uniform of a staff major with all the proper badges and insignia. It was found that they were German spies with rough maps of the disposition of our retreating forces and other valuable information in their possession. I was informed, later, that they were shot.

Before dawn, we got orders to retire again. It was always retire--retire. We were ready to fight ten times our number if only we could stop retiring.

Shortly after leaving this position we saw an airplane overhead. A few minutes later shrapnel began bursting in our direction. We scattered to each side of the highway, keeping under cover as best we could.

We marched all day--God knows how far--and finally, between one and two the following morning, reached a place which we believed to be Pinon.

As we neared Pinon, the sound of artillery fire could be heard, and the inhabitants were all leaving the town in any way that they could. Here I saw further effects of Prussian atrocities.

At this spot, a French woman, supporting her mutilated husband as best she could, passed us in a buggy. The sight was awful! His face and body were almost entirely covered with gashes from the Prussians' bayonets. His wife's face was as white as death except where three cruel cuts had laid it open. Neither of this pitiful pair was less than sixty years old. Fine "enemies" for soldiers' weapons!

Beyond this last village we lay in the open for a few hours' rest. We were so utterly exhausted that officers and men alike threw themselves upon the ground and instantly were asleep. My last waking recollection was of the sight of an officer of the guard striding wearily to and fro. He was afraid even to sit for fear sleep might conquer him. And my next recollection--seemingly coming right on the heels of the one I have mentioned--was of being shaken by the shoulders and having the warning shouted into my ear that we had got orders to force-march instantly.

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