Over There with the Australians | Page 3

white star-shell; it might have
belonged to one of the corpses lying near, with the lips drawn back, the
eyes fixed, and the complexion ghastly. He replied to my signal that he
was all right, but a nasty suspicion crept into my mind--his teeth had
chattered so much as to make him unable to answer a question of mine
just before we left the trench, but one took no notice of a thing like that,
for stage fright was common enough to all of us before a job actually
started. But "could he be depended on?" was the fear that was now
haunting me.
Presently some Germans came out of their trench. We counted eight of
them as they crawled down inside their broken wire. We cautiously

followed them, expecting that they were going out to the suspected
"listening post," but they went about fifty yards, and then lay down just
in front of their own parapet. After about twenty minutes they returned
the way they came, and I have no doubt reported that they had been
over to our wire and there were no Australian patrols out.
This had taken up most of our time, and I showed Wilson that we had
only ten minutes left, and that we had better get back so as not to cut it
too fine. I was rather surprised when he objected, spelling out Morse on
my hand that we had come out to find the "listening post," and we had
not searched up to the right. The Germans were evidently getting
suspicious of the silence, and to our consternation suddenly put down a
heavy barrage in No Man's Land, not more than thirty yards behind us.
There was no getting through it, and we grabbed each other's hand, and
only the pressure was needed to signal the one word "trapped." When
the shelling commenced we had instinctively made for a drain about
four feet deep that ran across No Man's Land, and "sat up" in about six
inches of water. Had we remained on top the light from the shells
would have revealed us only too plainly, being behind us. I was afraid
to look at my wristwatch, and when I did pluck up sufficient courage to
do so, I might have saved myself the trouble, as the opening shell from
our batteries at the same moment proclaimed that the time was up. As
we huddled down, sitting in the icy water, we realized that the objective
of our own guns was less than ten yards from us, and we could only
hope and pray that no more wire-cutting was going to be done that
night. Once, when we were covered with the returning debris, we
instinctively threw our arms round each other. When we shook
ourselves free, what was my amazement to find my companion shaking
with--laughter. There was now no need for silence, a shout could hardly
be heard a few yards away. He called to me: "Did you ever do the
Blondin act before, because we are walking a razor-edge right now.
We're between the devil and the 'deep sea,' anyway, and I think myself
the 'deep sea' will get us." As I looked at him something happened, and
I felt light-hearted as though miles from danger--all fear of death was
taken away. What did it matter if we were killed?--it was a strange
sense of security in a rather tight place.

After a short while our bombardment ceased. We learned afterward that
word was sent back to the artillery that we were still out. As the boche
fire also stopped soon afterward, we were able to scurry back and
surprise our friends with our safe appearance.
After this experience Ray Wilson and I were closer than brothers--than
twin brothers. It was only a common danger shared, such an ordinary
thing in trench life, but there was something that was not on the surface,
and though I was his officer, our friendship knew no barrier. I went
mad for a while when his body was found--mutilated--after he had been
missing three days. Don't talk of "not hating" to a man whose friend has
been foully murdered! What if he had been yours?
A very different man was Dan Macarthy, a typical outbacker. All the
schooling he ever got was from an itinerant teacher who would stay for
a week at the house, correct and set tasks, returning three months later
for another week. This system was adopted by the government for the
sparsely settled districts not able to support a teacher, as a means of
assisting the parents in teaching their children themselves. But Dan's
parents could neither read nor write, and what healthy youngster, with
"all out-of-doors" around him, would study by himself. Dan read with
difficulty and wrote with