A Yankee in the Trenches

Once, on the Somme in the fall of 1916, when I had been over the top and was being carried back somewhat disfigured but still in the ring, a cockney stretcher bearer shot this question at me:

“Hi sye, Yank. Wot th’ bloody ’ell are you in this bloomin’ row for? Ayen’t there no trouble t’ ’ome?”

And for the life of me I couldn’t answer. After more than a year in the British service I could not, on the spur of the moment, say exactly why I was there.

To be perfectly frank with myself and with the reader I had no very lofty motives when I took the King’s shilling. When the great war broke out, I was mildly sympathetic with England, and mighty sorry in an indefinite way for France and Belgium; but my sympathies were not strong enough in any direction to get me into uniform with a chance of being killed. Nor, at first, was I able to work up any compelling hate for Germany. The abstract idea of democracy did not figure in my calculations at all.

However, as the war went on, it became apparent to me, as I suppose it must have to everybody, that the world was going through one of its epochal upheavals; and I figured that with so much history in the making, any unattached young man would be missing it if he did not take a part in the big game.

I had an idea when I entered that recruiting office that the sergeant would receive me with open arms. He didn’t. Instead he looked me over with unqualified scorn and spat out, “Yank, ayen’t ye?”

And I in my innocence briefly answered, “Yep.”

“We ayen’t tykin’ no nootrals,” he said, with a sneer. And then: “Better go back to Hamerika and ’elp Wilson write ’is blinkin’ notes.”

Well, I was mad enough to poke that sergeant in the eye. But I didn’t. I retired gracefully and with dignity.

At the door another sergeant hailed me, whispering behind his hand, “Hi sye, mytie. Come around in the mornin’. Hi’ll get ye in.” And so it happened.

Next day my man was waiting and marched me boldly up to the same chap who had refused me the day before.

“ ’Ere’s a recroot for ye, Jim,” says my friend.

Jim never batted an eye. He began to “awsk” questions and to fill out a blank. When he got to the birthplace, my guide cut in and said, “Canada.”

The only place I knew in Canada was Campobello Island, a place where we camped one summer, and I gave that. I don’t think that anything but rabbits was ever born on Campobello, but it went. For that matter anything went. I discovered afterward that the sergeant who had captured me on the street got five bob (shillings) for me.

The physical examination upstairs was elaborate. They told me to strip, weighed me, and said I was fit.

We moved up to the front trenches at about half-past ten. At zero minus ten, that is, ten minutes of eleven, our artillery opened up. It was the first bombardment I had ever been under, and it seemed as though all the guns in the world were banging away. Afterwards I found that it was comparatively light, but it didn’t seem so then.

The guns were hardly started when there was a sound like escaping steam. Jerry leaned over and shouted in my ear: “There goes the gas. May it finish the blighters.”

Blofeld came dashing up just then, very much excited because he found we had not put on our masks, through some slip-up in the orders. We got into them quick. But as it turned out there was no need. There was a fifteen-mile wind blowing, which carried the gas away from us very rapidly. In fact it blew it across the Boche trenches so fast that it didn’t bother them either.

The barrage fire kept up right up to zero, as per schedule. At thirty seconds of eleven I looked at my watch and the din was at its height. At exactly eleven it stopped short. Fritz was still sending some over, but comparatively there was silence. After the earsplitting racket it was almost still enough to hurt.

And in that silence over the top we went.

Lanes had been cut through our wire, and we got through them quickly. The trenches were about one hundred twenty yards apart and we still had nearly one hundred to go. We dropped and started to crawl.

After a while we separated, and he went back, as he was considerably off his patrol. An hour or so later the mist began to get gray, and it was evident that dawn was near. I was a couple of hundred yards down from our battalion, and my man and I made for the trenches opposite where we were. As we climbed into a sap head, I was greeted by a Canadian corporal. He invited me to a tin of “char,” and I sent my man up the line to our own position.

We sat on the fire step drinking, and I told the corporal about meeting the sergeant out in front. While we were at the “char” it kept getting lighter, and presently a pair of Lewises started to rattle a hundred yards or so away down the line. Then came a sudden commotion and a kind of low, growling shout. That is the best way I can describe it. We stood up, and below we saw men going over the top.

“What the dickens can this be?” stuttered the corporal. “There’s been no barrage. There’s no orders for a charge. What is it? What is it?”

Well, there they were, going over, as many as two hundred of them⁠—growling. The corporal and I climbed out of the trench at the rear, over the parados, and ran across lots down to a point opposite where the Canadians had gone over, and watched.

They swept across No Man’s Land and into the Boche trench. There was the deuce of a ruckus over there for maybe two minutes, and then back they came⁠—carrying something.