The Burning Shore - Smith Wilbur - Страница 38
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When at last Centaine was certain she was utterly exhausted, she would kiss her father and go to her room.
However, as soon as she blew out the candle, her grief would overwhelm her once again, and within minutes the door would open softly and Anna would come to take her in her arms, and the whole cycle would begin again.
The comte broke in. He hammered on Centaine's bed room door, awakening them in those dark and early hours of the morning when all human energy is at its lowest ebb.
What is it? Anna called sleepily. Come! the comte shouted back. Come and see. With gowns hastily thrown over their nightclothes, they followed him through the kitchens and out into the paved yard. There they stopped and stared up at the eastern sky in wonder, for although there was no moon, it glowed with a strange wavering orange light as though somewhere below the horizon Vulcan had thrown open the door to the furnace of the gods.
Listen! commanded the comte, and they heard the sussuration upon the light breeze, and it seemed that the earth beneath their feet trembled to the force of that distant conflagration.
It has begun, he said, and only then did they realize that this was the opening barrage of the great new Allied offensive upon the Western Front.
They sat up the rest of that night in the kitchen, drinking pots of black coffee, and every little while trooping out again into the yard to watch the fiery display as though it were some astronomical phenomenon.
The comte was exultant as he described to them what was taking place. This is the saturation barrage which will flatten the barbed wire and destroy the enemy trenches. The boche will be annihilated, he pointed to the fiery sky, who could withstand that! The thousands of artillery batteries were each firing on a front of a hundred yards, and over the next seven days and nights they never ceased. The sheer weight of metal which they hurled on to the German lines obliterated the trench work and parapets, and ploughed and reploughed the earth.
The comte was aflame with warlike and patriotic ardour. You are living in history. You are witness to one of the great battles of the ages, But for Centaine and Anna, seven days and seven nights was too long a time; the first amazement soon turned to apathy and disinterest. They went about the daily life of the chAteau, no longer heeding the distant bombardment, and at night slept through the pyrotechnics and the comte's summonses to Come and watch! Then on the seventh morning, while they were at breakfast, even they were aware of the change in the sound and intensity of the guns.
The comte sprang up from the table and ran into the yard again, his mouth still full of bread and cheese, and the corf ee bowl in his hand. Listen! Do you hear it? The rolling barrage has begun! The artillery batteries were rolling their fire forward, creating a moving barrier of high explosive through which no living things could advance or retreat.
The brave Allies will be ready for the final assault now In the forward British trenches they waited below the parapets. With each man in full battle-dress, his equipment burden was almost sixty pounds in weight.
The thunder of the bursting high-explosives Tolled away from them, leaving them with dulled senses and singing eardrums. The whistles of the section leaders shrilled along the trenches, and they roused themselves and crowded to the feet of the assault ladders. Then, like an army of khaki lemmings, they swarmed out of their burrows into the open, and peered around them dazedly.
They were in a transformed and devastated land, so ravaged by the guns that no blade of grass nor twig of tree remained. Only the shattered tree stumps stuck up from the soft fecal-coloured porridge of mud before them. This dreadful landscape was shrouded in the yellowish fog of burned explosives.
forward! the cry passed down the line, and again and whistles trilled and goaded them on.
The long Lee Enfield rifles held out before them, the fixed bayonets aglitter, sinking ankle and knee deep into the soft earth, slipping into the overlapping shell holes and dragging themselves out again, their line bulging and lagging, their horizon limited to a mere hundred paces by swirling nitrous fog, they trudged forward.
Of the enemy trenches they saw no sign, the parapets had been obliterated and flattened. Overhead passed the continuous roar of the barrage, while every few seconds a short shell from their own guns fell into their densely packedlines.
Close up in the centre! The gaps torn in their ranks by the guns were filled by other amorphous khaki bodies.
Keep the line! Keep the line! The orders were almost drowned by the tumult of the guns.
Then in the wilderness ahead of them they saw the glint of metal through the smoke. It was a low wall of metal, interlocking scales of grey steel like those on the back of a crocodile.
The German machine-gunners had had the benefit of seven days forewarning, and as the British barrage rolled away behind them, they carried their weapons up the shafts from their dugouts to the surface and set them up on their tripods on the churned muddy lip of the ruined trenches. The Maxim machine-guns were each fitted with a steel shield to protect the crews from rifle-fire, and the guns were so closely aligned that the edges of the shields overlapped each other.
The British infantry was out in the open, walking down on a wall of machine-guns. The front ranks yelled when they saw the guns and started forward at a run, trying to reach them with the bayonet. Then they ran into the wire.
They had been assured that the barbed wire would be cut to pieces by the barrages. It was not. The high-explosive had made no impression upon it, except to tangle and twist it into an even more formidable barrier. While they floundered and struggled in the grip of the wire, the German Maxim machine-guns opened up on them.
The Maxim machine-gun has a cyclic rate of fire of 500 rounds per minute. It has the reputation of being the most reliable and rugged machine-gun ever built, and that day it added to that reputation the distinction of becoming the most lethal weapon that man had ever devised. As the plodding ranks of British infantry emerged from the fog of nitro-smoke, still attempting to maintain their rigid formation, shoulder to shoulder and four ranks deep, they made a perfect target for the Maxims. The solid sheets of fire swung back and forth, the scythe-blades of the harvesters, and the carnage surpassed anything seen before upon the battlefields of history.
The losses would certainly have been greater had not the troops, under the extreme duress of the Maxims, used their common sense and broken ranks. Instead of that ponderous, wooden-beaded advance, they had tried to creep and crawl forward in small groups, but even these had finally been beaten back by the wall of machine-guns.
Then with another grand offensive on the Western Front decimated almost as it began, the German force holding the ridges opposite Mort Homme counterattacked jubilantly.
Centaine became gradually aware of the cessation of that distant holocaust, and the strange stillness which followed it.
What has happened, Papa? The British troops have overrun the German artillery positions, the comte explained excitedly. I have a mind to ride across and view the battlefield. I want to bear witness to this turning-point in history - You will do no such idiotic thin& Anna told him brusquely.
You don't understand, woman, even as we stand here talking, our Allies are rolling forward, eating up the German lines What I understand is that the milch cow has to be fed, and the cellars have to be mucked ouC While history passes me by, the comte capitulated ungraciously, and went muttering down to the cellar.
Then the guns began again, much closer, and the windows rattled in their frames. The comte shot up the stairs and into the yard.
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