OCR Text |
Show II W 1? AME8KM SOLDO -WHO WENT rfAi0111(ilJYfflpLY y MACHINE GUNNER.OTNG IN FRANCE-" CS I 19(7 BY .( t'M lARTHiiRtirf cwry " EMPEY, QUESTIONING A GERMAN PRISONER, FINDS HE IS FROM NEW YORK. Synopsis. Fired by the sinking of the Lusitania, with the loss of - American lives, Arthur Guy Empey, :in American living in Jersey City, goes to England and enlists as a private in the British army. After a short experience as a recruiting officer in London, he is sent to trnin-' trnin-' iug quarters in France, where he first hears the sound of big guns and makes the acquaintance of "cooties." After a brief period of training Einpey's company is sent into the front-line trenches, where he takes his first turn on the fire step while the bullets whiz overhead. Empey learns, as comrade falls, that death lurks always in the trenches. Chaplain distinguishes himself by rescuing wounded men under hot fire. With pick and shovel Empey has experience as a trench digger in No Man's Land. Exciting experience on listening post detail. Exciting Ex-citing work on observation post duty. Back in rest billets Empey writes and stages a successful play. CHAPTER XIX Continued. 16 At one point of the line where the trenches were very close, a stake was driven into the ground midway between be-tween the hostile lines. At night when It was his turn, Tommy would crawl to this stake and attach some London papers to it, while at the foot he would place tins of bully beef, fags, sweets, and other delicacies that he had received re-ceived from Blighty In the ever looked-for looked-for parcel. Later on Fritz would come out and get these luxuries. The next night Tommy would go out to see what Fritz put into his stocking. The donation generally consisted of a paper from Berlin, telling who was winning the war, some tinned sausages, cigars, and occasionally a little beer, but a funny thing, Tommy never returned re-turned with the beer unless it was Inside In-side of him. His platoon got a whiff of his breath one night and the offending Tommy lost his job. One night a young English sergeant crawled to the stake and as he tried to detach the German paper a bomb exploded ex-ploded and mangled him horribly. Fritz had set a trap and gained another victim vic-tim which was only one more black mark against him in the book of this war. From that time on diplomatic relations re-lations were severed. Returning to Tommy, I think his spirit is best shown in the questions he asks. It is never "who is going to win" but always "how long will It take?" CHAPTER XX. "Chats With Fritz." We were swimming in money, from the receipts of our theatrical venture, and had forgotten all about the war, when an order came through that our brigade would again take over their sector of the tine. The day that these orders were Issued, Is-sued, our captain assembled the company com-pany and asked for volunteers to go to the Machine Gunschool at St. Omar. I volunteered and was accepted. Sixteen men from our brigade left for the course in machine gunnery. This course lasted two weeks and we rejoined our unit and were assigned to the brigade machine gun company. It almost broke my heart to leave my company mates. The gun we used was the Vlckcrs, Light .303. water cooled. I was still a member of the Suicide club, having jumped from the frying ' pan into the fire. I was assigned to section 1, gun No. 2, and the first time "in" took position in the front-line trench. During the day our gun would he dismounted on the fire step ready for Instant use. We shared a dugout with the Lewis gunners. At "stand to" we would mount our gun on the parapet and go on watch beside It until "stand down" in the morning. Then the gun would 'be dismounted and again placed in readiness on the lire step. We did eight days In the fronl-llne trench without anything unusual happening hap-pening outside of the ordinary trench routine. On the night that we were to "carry out," a bombing raid against the German lines was pulled off. This raiding raid-ing party consisted of sixty company men, sixteen bombers, and four Lew-la machine guns with their crews. The raid took the Bodies by surprise and was a complete success, the party bringing back twenty-one prisoners. The Germans must have been awfully awful-ly Rore, because Ihey turned loose a barrage of shrapnel, with a few "Min-niv's" "Min-niv's" and "wiilzz bangs" intermixed. The slii'lls were dropping Into OT3r fron' line VXv hilntones. To get even, we could have left the prisoners in the fire trench, in charge of the men on guard and let them click Fritz's strafeing hut Tommy does not treat prisoners that way. Five of them were brought into ray dugout and turned over to me so that they would be safe from the German fire. In the candlelight, they looked very much shaken, nerves gone and chalky faces, with the exception of one, a great big fellow. He looked very much at ease. I liked him from the start. I got out the rum jar and gave each a nip and passed around some fags, the old reliable Woodbines. The other prisoners looked their gratitude, but the big fellow said In English, "Thank you, sir, the rum Is excellent and I appreciate ap-preciate it, also your kindness." He told me his name was Carl Schmidt, of the Sixty-sixth Bavarian Light infantry; that he had lived six years in New York (knew the city better bet-ter than I did), had been to Coney island and many of our ball games, ne was a regular fan. I couldn't make him believe that Hans Wagner wasn't the best ball player in the world. From New York be had gone to London, Lon-don, where he worked as a waiter In s M S N j Vy.-s.-. -' t.-." :" ... fc,''"''. """ '' "'" ' ' : -.".' , v . i S v.. 2? r ' - v 5 .'''-X . .' :. . '-. - ..:vw . Dead Bodies Eerywhere. the Hotel Russell. Just before the war he went home to Germany to see his parents, the war came and he was conscripted. con-scripted. He told me he was very sorry to hear that London was in ruins from the Zeppelin raids. I could not convince con-vince him otherwise, for hadn't he seen moving pictures in one of the Gorman cities of St. Taul's cathedral In ruins. I changed the subject because he was so stubborn In his belief. It was my intention to try and pump him for Information as to the methods of the German snipers, who had been causing caus-ing us trouble in the last few days. I broached the subject and be shut up like a clam. After a few minutes he very Innocently said: "German snipers get paid rewards for killing the English." I eagerly asked, "What are they?" He answered : "For killing or wounding an English private, the sniper gets one mark. For killing or wounding an English officer he gets five marks, but if he kills a Red Clip or English general, the sniper gets twenty-one days tied to the wheel of a limber as punishment for his careless- Jess." Then he paused, waiting for me to bite. I suppose. I bit all right and asked him why the sniper was punished for killing an English general. With a smile he replied re-plied : "Well, you see, If all the English generals gen-erals were killed, there would be no one left to make costly mistakes." I shut him up, he was getting too fresh for a prisoner. After a while he winked at me and I winked back, then the escort came to take the prisoners to the rear. I shook hands and wished him "The best of luck and a safe journey jour-ney to Blighty." I liked that prisoner, he was a fine fellow, had an Iron Cross, too. I advised ad-vised him to keep it out of sight, or some Tommy would be sending it home to his girl' in Blighty ais a souvenir. One dark and rainy night while on guard we were looking over the top from the fire step of our front-line trench, when we heard a noise immediately imme-diately in front of our barbed wire. The sentry next to me challenged, "Halt, who comes there?" and brought his rifle to the aim. -His challenge was answered in German. A captain In the next traverse climbed upon the sandbagged sand-bagged parapet to investigate a brave but foolhardy deed "Crack" went a bullet and he tumbled back into the trench with a hole through his stomach and died a few minutes later. A lance corporal in the next platoon was so enraged en-raged at the captain's death that he chucked a Mills bomb In the direction of the noise with the shouted warning to us: "Duck your uappers, my lucky lads." A sharp dynamite report, a flare in front of us, and then silence. We immediately sent up two star shells, and in their light could see two dark forms lying on the ground close to our wire. A sergeant and four stretcher-bearers went out In front and soon returned, carrying two limp bodies. Down in the dugout, in the flickering light of three caudles, we saw that they were two German officers, offi-cers, one a captain and the other an "unterotlizier," a rank one grade higher than a sergeant general, but below the grade of lieutenant. The captain's face had been almost completely torn away by the bomb's explosion. The unteroffizler was alive, breathing with difficulty. In a few minutes min-utes he opened his eyes and blinked In the glare of the candles. The pair had evidently been drinking drink-ing heavily, for the alcohol fumes were sickening and completely pervaded the dugout. I turned away In disgust, hating to see a man cross the Great Divide Di-vide full of booze. One of our officers could speak German Ger-man and he questioned the dying man. In a faint voice, interrupted by frequent fre-quent hiccoughs, the unteroffizler told his story. There had been a drinking bout among the officers in one of the German Ger-man dugouts, the main beverage being champagne. With a drunken leer he informed us that champagne was plentiful plen-tiful on their side and that it did not cost them anything either. About seven that night the conversation had turned to the "contemptible" English, and the captain had made a wager that he would hang his cap on the English barbed wire to show his contempt for the English sentries. The wager was accepted. At eight o'clock the captain and be bad crept out Into No Man's Land to carry out this wager. They bad gotten about halfway across when the drink took effect and the captain fell asleep. After about two hours of vain attempts the unteroffizler unter-offizler bad at last succeeded In waking wak-ing the captain, reminded him of bis bet, and warned him that lie would he the laughing stock of the officers' mess if be did not accomplish bis object, but the captain was trembling all over and insisted on returning to the German lines. In the darkness they lost their bearings and crawled toward the English Eng-lish trenches. They reached the barbed wire and were suddenly challenged by our sentry. Being too drunk to realize that the challenge was In English, the captain refused to crawl back. Finally the unteroffizler convinced his superior that they were in front of the English wire. Realizing this too late, the captain cap-tain drew his revolver and with a muttered mut-tered curse fired blindly toward our trench. His bullet no doubt killed our captain. Then the bomb came over and there he was, dying and a good job too, we thought. The captain dead? Well, his men wouldn't weep at the news. Without giving us any further Information Infor-mation the unteroffizler died. We searched the bodies for identification identifi-cation disks but they had left everything every-thing behind before starting on their foolhardy errand. Next- afternoon we burled them In our little cemetery apart from the graves of the Tommies. If you ever go into that cemetery you will see two little wooden crosses In the corner of the cemetery set away from the rest. They read : Captain Genua nA'rmy Died 1016 Unknown R. I. P. Unteroffizler German Army Died 1916 Unknown R. I. P. Empey and his machine-gun company go "over the. top" in a successful but costly attack on the German trenches. The story of this thrilling charge is told in the next installment. |