“Paid His Way in Huns”
Our bomb thrower was twice promoted for bravery, and finally was offered a commission in his regiment “for setting traps for Fritz when he goes a-sniping.” A bomber is called on to do a lot of work besides bombing, such as crawling about at night sniffing trouble, and likely points where Huns may be blown sky high. He would like to get a quick promotion but “at any rate,” he writes, “I can truthfully say that I have already blotted out enough Huns to pay for my scalp, if that business deal comes to the point of record. And it is a most cheerful and fortifying sensation. I would like my epitaph to read ‘He paid his way in Huns.’”
Wounds, yes, and minor disabilities, but he writes, “I don’t need my left side to throw bombs and the Lord has spared my right side for a special purpose. I have got more than my share of Huns as it is and I firmly intend to get some more. Three of us, with sufficient bombs, accounted for 46 dead Huns, 26 wounded and 22 prisoners in one single afternoon. This was a redoubt which they surrendered, after they had had enough.”
He was finally sent away to an Officers’ Training Camp and after six weeks came back to the front as first lieutenant. In the meantime, though, his regiment had been remounted and was doing patrol duty. Patrol duty did not suit Lieutenant Z. He therefore joined the Machine Gun Corps, and spent several months in a “Tank Menagerie.” At Messines Ridge he led a division of the “Rhinos” into battle. The Military Cross he won there is only small evidence to the steadfast heroism he displayed that day.
He was well acquainted with conditions by that time. His description of a battle at the Somme shows that:
“I was only fifteen hundred yards from our front line, and the place taken was on an upward slope, so all was in full sight. At the given moment, 4.45 p.m. of a lovely summer evening, up they went, ‘over the top,’ famous Celtic regiments, all together, a long and gallant line. Bayonets sparkling in the sun, up the slope they go! Behind me our massed batteries are making one great crashing roar till your temples throb and throb, and ahead of our men the very earth is heaving and moving amidst a fog of green and black and yellow and gray smoke. Now, No Man’s Land, so long a desert, is full of life and death and joy and misery. White vicious balls of shrapnel puff above; or deadly black and green ones, and below the great spouts and mushroom columns of jet-black smoke spring up like fungoid growths here and there. The shrill rat-tat of machine guns and the pop-pop-pop of rifles can be heard. On the little figures run and jump, and the bayonets gleam and sparkle, and the first line disappears into the trench ahead, and you are left to imagine what follows. Still, No Man’s Land is well populated. Wave after wave is speeding straight ahead. The ground is dotted with immovable dots, and others which can crawl. A bright magnesium star shoots up well ahead, and the batteries lift their fire without checking. The waves all surge forward and out of sight at last, and No Man’s Land is left to its misery. Then you see the stretcher-bearers out there among the great grinding ‘crumps’ and the shrapnel, calmly picking up their men, and back they come slowly. You watch one group of five. Four bearers and a mangled something which is alive. A monster spout and cloud springs up near. They swerve and crouch for a few seconds and on they come. Another black death entirely hides them from view, and you wonder. No! Here they come. So slowly and steadily through the cloud, and you say to yourself: ‘Hurry, hurry; for God’s sake run!’ But they don’t. They walk slowly and carefully with their burden, straight and the shortest way. Some win home and some do not. Other men are carrying others, and some hobble and limp and stagger by themselves. And all the while the big shells burst and the shrapnel sprays the ground.
“No Man’s Land is again a desert, dotted with dots of death.”