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Over There with the Canadians at Vimy Ridge
Over There with the Canadians at Vimy Ridge
CHAPTER I
SHELLS AND MINNENWERFER
"Look out! There she comes."
These words were whispered, for it would have been a serious military offense if the speaker had lifted his voice to a resonant tone in addressing his companion. Both were in khaki uniform, and had helmets on their heads. They had been crouching in a camouflaged pit out in No Man's Land in the Vimy Ridge sector of the western battle front in Prance.
It was dusk of evening, a mist-laden dusk, quite as serviceable for secret movements as the darkness under a clear sky. One could not see an object as large as a man twenty yards away because of the fog.
All day it had been raining, just a slow drizzle, but nevertheless, a good deal of water had fallen, and the chief characteristic of the trenches was mud. "Second Looie" George Tourtelle and Private Irving Ellis had been sent out through the communication trench to the listening post, in which they were crouched when Irving whispered the words "Look out! There she comes!"
There was really no need of his offering any such warning to his companion, for the latter could hear the whistle of the approaching shell just as well as he, but there was also no call for the punishment that the second lieutenant administered. The shell passed harmlessly over their heads and exploded behind the front line trenches of the Canadian company, of which the occupants of the spy pit were members, and almost simultaneously with the explosion, Lieut. Tourtelle struck Irving a sharp blow in the face with the back of his hand.
"There!" he said viciously, with apparently no effort to subdue the tone of his voice in accord with the strict precautionary rules of such positions. "See that you keep your thoughts to yourself hereafter or I'll send you back to report to the captain."
Irving was astonished, as well as angered at this treatment. He was sure there was no call even for a reprimand, whereas the officer had spoken in tones quite loud enough for the enemy to hear fifty, or possibly a hundred, yards away. In fact, he was sure that if the "second looie" had any reflection in him at all, he must have experienced a thrill of apprehension very soon afterward lest the sound of his voice had been heard by some of his superior officers in the front trenches. If so, an inquiry into its meaning most certainly would follow.
Of course, – Irving resented the uncalled-for exhibition of brutality just exhibited by Lieut. Tourtelle, but he had too much military sense to show his resentment by look or act. Instead, he decided to take his punishment and the accompanying rebuke as provocative of a little self-discipline and to profit from the experience, in spite of the injustice that went with it.
"I never did like that fellow from the first day I met him," Private Ellis told himself, grinding his teeth with rage under the first impulse of revenge. "Now I know him to be the very sort I thought he was. Nobody but a coward would do what he did. He knows he'd never dare to meet me on even terms. I'd clean him up so thoroughly there wouldn't be anything for a minnenwerfer to smell if one came along and dropped onto the spot where he ought to be. Goodness! there's one now."
The "minnie" referred to in Irving's soliloquy lighted right in the communication trench not more than 200 feet from the outlook pit in which the officer and the private were stationed. The explosion threw up a mass of earth, several bucketfuls of which came down into the pit as if from a giant pepper-box. One stone about the size of two fists struck Irving on his left shoulder, and for several minutes the boy feared some of the bones were broken or the joint dislocated.