23 chapters
12 hour read
Selected Chapters
23 chapters
FRONT LINES
FRONT LINES
BY BOYD CABLE AUTHOR OF “BETWEEN THE LINES,” “ACTION FRONT,” “GRAPES OF WRATH” NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 681 FIFTH AVENUE Copyright , 1918, BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY —— All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America THESE LINES, WRITTEN AT AND TELLING ABOUT THE FRONT, ARE DEDICATED—WITH THE FERVENT WISH THAT THOSE THERE MAY SOON SEE THE LAST OF IT—TO THE FRONT, BY THE AUTHOR These tales have been written over a period running from the later stages of the Somme
5 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
FOREWORD
FOREWORD
These tales have been written over a period running from the later stages of the Somme to the present time. For the book I have two ambitions—the first, that to my Service readers it may bring a few hours of interest and entertainment, may prove some sort of a picture and a record of what they themselves have been through; the second, that it may strike and impress and stir those people at home who even now clearly require awakening to all that war means. I know that a great many war workers hav
21 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
I
I
A good score of the picture papers arrived at the Oughth London from friends at home to men in the unit. That did it. There was an immediate boom in Art in the Oughth London, and sculpture became the popular spare-time hobby of the unit. This was all, as I have said, at a period when spare time was plentiful. The unit was billeted in a village well behind the firing-line in a peacefully sylvan locality. It was early summer, so that the light lasted long in the evenings, and gave plenty of opport
13 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
II
II
THE SUICIDE CLUB The Royal Jocks (Oughth Battalion) had suffered heavily in the fighting on the Somme, and after they had been withdrawn from action to another and quieter part of the line, all ranks heard with satisfaction that they were to be made up to full strength by a big draft from Home. There were the usual wonderings and misgivings as to what sort of a crowd the draft would be, and whether they would be at all within the limits of possibility of licking into something resembling the sha
2 hour read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
III
III
Now, two hundred yards is a short distance as measurement goes, but into those two hundred yards through the chaos of wrecked wood the Corporal packed as much suffering, as dragging a passage of time, as many tortures of hope and fear and pain, as would fill an ordinary lifetime. Every yard was a desperate struggle, every fallen tree-trunk, each tangle of fallen branch, was a cruel problem to be solved, a pain-racked and laborious effort to overcome. A score of times he collapsed and lay panting
10 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
IV
IV
THE DIVING TANK His Majesty’s land-ship Hotstuff was busy rebunkering and refilling ammunition in a nicely secluded spot under the lee of a cluster of jagged stumps that had once been trees, while her Skipper walked round her and made a careful examination of her skin. She bore, on her blunt bows especially, the marks of many bullet splashes and stars and scars, and on her starboard gun turret a couple of blackened patches of blistered paint where a persistent Hun had tried his ineffectual best
16 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
V
V
IN THE MIST When the Lieutenant turned out of his dug-out in the very small hours, he found with satisfaction that a thin mist was hanging over the ground. “Can’t see much,” he said half an hour later, peering out from the front trench. “But so much the better. Means they won’t be so likely to see us. So long, old man. Come along, Studd.” The other officer watched the two crawl out and vanish into the misty darkness. At intervals a flare light leaped upward from one side or the other, but it rev
2 hour read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
VI
VI
Remembering this, it is easy to understand the consternation in Mrs. Teddy’s mind when, after the War had been running a year, Teddy announced that he was going to enlist. He was firm about it too. He had thought the whole thing out—house to be shut up, she to go stay with her mother, his separation allowance so much, and so much more in the bank to draw on, and so on. Her remonstrances he met so promptly that one can only suppose them anticipated. His health? Never had a day’s sickness, as she
12 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
VII
VII
AN AIR BARRAGE The Gunnery Officer was an enthusiast on his work—in fact, if you took the Squadron’s word for it, he went past that and was an utter crank on machine-guns and everything connected with them. They admitted all the benefits of this enthusiasm, the excellent state in which their guns were always to be found, the fact that in air fighting they probably had fewer stoppages and gun troubles than any other Squadron at the Front; but on the other hand they protested that there was a time
29 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
VIII
VIII
NIGHTMARE Jake Harding from early childhood had suffered from a horribly imaginative mind in the night hours, and had endured untold tortures from dreams and nightmares. One of his most frequent night terrors was to find himself fleeing over a dreary waste, struggling desperately to get along quickly and escape Something, while his feet and legs were clogged with dragging weights, and dreadful demons and bogies and bunyips howled in pursuit. This was an odd dream, because having been born and br
2 hour read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
IX
IX
“I believe the Staff exists solely to find soft jobs for the wealthy and useless portion of the aristocracy. “I believe the Staff does nothing except wear a supercilious manner and red tabs and trimmings. “I believe the Staff is No Good.” As to the average of correctness in this Credo I say nothing, but I can at least show that these things are not always thus. The Staff had been having what the General’s youthful and irrepressibly cheerful aide-de-camp called “a hectic three days.” The Headquar
11 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
X
X
A RAID For several days our artillery had been bombarding stretches of the front German trenches and cutting the wire entanglements out in front of them preparatory to a big attack. The point actually selected for the raid was treated exactly the same as a score of other points up and down the line. By day the guns poured a torrent of shrapnel on the barbed wire, tearing it to pieces, uprooting the stakes, cutting wide swathes through it. Because the opposing lines were fairly close together, ou
14 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
XI
XI
A ROARING TRADE The “O.C. Dump,” a young Second Lieutenant of Artillery, thumped the receiver down disgustedly on the telephone and made a few brief but pungent remarks on railways and all connected therewith. “What’s the trouble, Vickers?” said a voice at the door, and the Lieutenant wheeled to find the Colonel commanding the Ammunition Column and the dump standing just inside. “I was just going to look for you, sir,” said Vickers. “They’ve cut our line again—put two or three heavy shells into
2 hour read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
XII
XII
“Plenty,” said Lollie. “If you don’t mind paying steep for ’em and meeting a crowd of people and girls I’ve no use for myself.” “I’m on,” replied Bullivant. “Lead me to it. But don’t let’s forget that twelve-something train.” They spent half an hour in the “place,” where Lollie drank some exceedingly bad champagne, and spent every minute of the time in a joyful reunion with an old school chum he hadn’t seen for years. Then he searched Bullivant out and they departed for the hotel to pick up thei
14 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
XIII
XIII
BRING UP THE GUNS When Jack Duncan and Hugh Morrison suddenly had it brought home to them that they ought to join the New Armies, they lost little time in doing so. Since they were chums of long standing in a City office, it went without saying that they decided to join and “go through it” together, but it was much more open to argument what branch of the Service or regiment they should join. They discussed the question in all its bearings, but being as ignorant of the Army and its ways as the a
27 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
XIV
XIV
OUR BATTERY’S PRISONER It was in the very small hours of a misty grey morning that the Lieutenant was relieved at the Forward Observing Position in the extreme front line established after the advance, and set out with his Signaller to return to the Battery. His way took him over the captured ground and the maze of captured trenches and dug-outs more or less destroyed by bombardment, and because there were still a number of German shells coming over the two kept as nearly as possible to a route
2 hour read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
XV
XV
Then his men swarmed down into the wide crater, and in two minutes the fight was over. There were another few seconds of rapid fire at two or three of the Germans who had jumped out and run for their lives, and that finished the immediate performance. The Sergeant looked round, climbed from the hole, and made a hasty examination of the ground about them. “’Tisn’t as good a crater as we left,” he said, “an’ it’s ’way out front o’ the line the others is digging, so we’d best get back. Get a hold o
9 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
XVI
XVI
ACCORDING TO PLAN “Ratty” Travers dropped his load with a grunt of satisfaction, squatted down on the ground, and tilting his shrapnel helmet back, mopped a streaming brow. As the line in which he had moved dropped to cover, another line rose out of the ground ahead of them and commenced to push forward. Some distance beyond, a wave of kilted Highlanders pressed on at a steady walk up to within about fifty paces of the string of flickering, jumping white patches that marked the edge of the “arti
28 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
XVII
XVII
DOWN IN HUNLAND It was cold—bitterly, bitingly, fiercely cold. It was also at intervals wet, and misty, and snowy, as the ’plane ran by turns through various clouds; but it was the cold that was uppermost in the minds of pilot and observer as they flew through the darkness. They were on a machine of the night-bombing squadron, and the “Night-Fliers” in winter weather take it more or less as part of the night’s work that they are going to be out in cold and otherwise unpleasant weather conditions
2 hour read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
XVIII
XVIII
He half rose from his cover and waved an answer. Promptly a figure rose from the shell-hole and with hands well over his head came running and stumbling over the rough ground towards him. Three-quarter way over he dropped into another shell-hole, and from there waved again. At another reassuring wave from Ackroyd he rose, ran in and flung himself down into the shell-hole where the Corporal waited. The Corporal met him with his bayoneted rifle at the ready and his finger on the trigger, and the G
4 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
XIX
XIX
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 positi
11 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
XX
XX
STRETCHER-BEARERS Lieutenant Drew was wounded within four or five hundred yards of the line from which his battalion started to attack. He caught three bullets in as many seconds—one in the arm, one in the shoulder, and one in the side—and went down under them as if he had been pole-axed. The shock stunned him for a little, and he came to hazily to find a couple of the battalion stretcher-bearers trying to lift him from the soft mud in which he was half sunk. Drew was rather annoyed with them fo
11 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
XXI
XXI
THE CONQUERORS The public room (which in England would be the Public Bar) of the “Cheval Blanc” estaminet, or “Chevvle Blank” as its present-day customers know it, had filled very early in the evening. Those members of the Labour Company who packed the main room had just returned to the blessings of comparative peace after a very unpleasant spell in the line which had culminated in a last few days—and the very last day especially—on a particularly nasty “job o’ work.” Making a corduroy road of p
20 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter