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　　CHAPTER VIII

　　The Canadians were not the only men to go out raiding. It became part of the routine of war, that quick killing in the night, for English and Scottish and Irish and Welsh troops, and some had luck with it, and some men liked it, and to others it was a horror which they had to do, and always it was a fluky, nervy job, when any accident might lead to tragedy.

　　I remember one such raid by the 12th West Yorks in January of '15, which was typical of many others, before raids developed into minor battles, with all the guns at work.

　　There were four lieutenants who drew up the plan and called for volunteers, and it was one of these who went out first and alone to reconnoiter the ground and to find the best way through the German barbed wire. He just slipped out over the parapet and disappeared into the darkness. When he came back he had a wound in the wrist—it was just the bad luck of a chance bullet—but brought in valuable knowledge. He had found a gap in the enemy's wire which would give an open door to the party of visitors. He had also tested the wire farther along, and thought it could be cut without much bother.

　　“Good enough!” was the verdict, and a detachment started out for No Man's Land, divided into two parties.

　　The enemy trenches were about one hundred yards away, which seems a mile in the darkness and the loneliness of the dead ground. At regular intervals the German rockets flared up so that the hedges and wire and parapets along their line were cut out ink-black against the white illumination, and the two patrols of Yorkshiremen who had been crawling forward stopped and crouched lower and felt themselves revealed, and then when darkness hid them again went on.

　　The party on the left were now close to the German wire and under the shelter of a hedge. They felt their way along until the two subalterns who were leading came to the gap which had been reported by the first explorer. They listened intently and heard the German sentry stamping his feet and pacing up and down. Presently he began to whistle softly, utterly unconscious of the men so close to him—so close now that any stumble, any clatter of arms, any word spoken, would betray them.

　　The two lieutenants had their revolvers ready and crept forward to the parapet. The men had to act according to instinct now, for no order could be given, and one of them found his instinct led him to clamber right into the German trench a few yards away from the sentry, but on the other side of the traverse. He had not been there long, holding his breath and crouching like a wolf, before footsteps came toward him and he saw the glint of a cigarette.

　　It was a German officer going his round. The Yorkshire boy sprang on to the parapet again, and lay across it with his head toward our lines and his legs dangling in the German trench. The German officer's cloak brushed his heels, but the boy twisted round a little and stared at him as he passed. But he passed, and presently the sentry began to whistle again, some old German tune which cheered him in his loneliness. He knew nothing of the eyes watching him through the darkness nor of his nearness to death.

　　It was the first lieutenant who tried to shoot him. But the revolver was muddy and would not fire. Perhaps a click disturbed the sentry. Anyhow, the moment had come for quick work. It was the sergeant who sprang upon him, down from the parapet with one pounce. A frightful shriek, with the shrill agony of a boy's voice, wailed through the silence. The sergeant had his hand about the German boy's throat and tried to strangle him and to stop another dreadful cry.

　　The second officer made haste. He thrust his revolver close to the struggling sentry and shot him dead, through the neck, just as he was falling limp from a blow on the head given by the butt-end of the weapon which had failed to fire. The bullet did its work, though it passed through the sergeant's hand, which had still held the man by the throat. The alarm had been raised and German soldiers were running to the rescue.

　　“Quick!” said one of the officers.

　　There was a wild scramble over the parapet, a drop into the wet ditch, and a race for home over No Man's Land, which was white under the German flares and noisy with the waspish note of bullets.

　　The other party were longer away and had greater trouble to find a way through, but they, too, got home, with one officer badly wounded, and wonderful luck to escape so lightly. The enemy suffered from “the jumps” for several nights afterward, and threw bombs into their own barbed wire, as though the English were out there again. And at the sound of those bombs the West Yorks laughed all along their trenches. Now It Can Be Told