THE ATTACK.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1706, 1 May 1917, Page 4

THE ATTACK.

(By Patrick McGill). “Three minutes more!” said the young officer, looking at his wrist watch, and addressing his remark to Rifleman Mike Garney, “then we’re over the top.” “Yes, sor,” said Mike, filling his pipe and lighting it. “I suppose the Tanks are near the German trench, be now.” The officer nodded his head, and fingered his whistle. The thousand guns snug in their secret emplacements, were still thundering; the shells were smashing the German trenches to smithereens. “ It’s the divil’s own shindy!” said Mike. He was a broad shouldered man of medium height, and with a queer puckered little face, high cheek bones, and a small clay pipe which he always carried about with him, inside his cap on parade, and in his haversack on the march. That was, of course, when he was not smoking, and he smoked at every opportunity, the pipe in one side of his niouth, and the bowl turned down. Mike was a bomber, fond of the work, and a man of merit in the execution of his duties. The young officer climbed up on the parapet, took a last look at his watch, and blew the whistle. The soldiers swarmed over the parapet, Mike Garney one of the first. Out in the open his first feeling was one of disappointment; to start with, the charge was as dull as a church parade. Garney, although orders were given to the contrary, expected a wild, whooping, forward rush, but the men stepped out soberly, with regulated precision. “They’re having a slow march on the parade ground,” said Garney. In front, a multitude of German gas shells had exploded, and a curtain of smoky fumes lay over No Man’s Land. The tanks could not be seen, the enemy trenches were invisible, the air was alive with bullets.

Garney and his mates went forward, A little Y-shaped valley formed by the caprice of the breeze opened in the fumes and at its far end the enemy’s wire entanglements could be seen. Garney walked along the valley for some twenty yards, then he glanced to his left and found that there was not a comrade in sight. “There. Murtah,*we-ve lost connection,” he shouted, turning to his right., But his words were wasted on smoke and air. Murtah had disappeared. Garney was all alone in his little glen and invisible birds were flickering angry wings close to his ears. His first inclination was to turn back, not through fear, but with a desire to make enquiries.

“Well, 1 can’t take a German trench on me own,” he muttered, standing still and puffing his pipe meditatively. “But it doesn’t matter a damn. I’ll go forward.” He felt fear in a certain measure now, but he was attracted towards that which engendered the fear, as an urchin attracted towards a wasp’s nest longs to poke the hive and annoy the occupants. “Suppose I get killed now afore 1 see anything,” he said to himself. “1 don’t want to get killed without a bit o’divilment.”

Ho reached the enemy's wires, ilio few that remained, tripped and fell headlong. Getting to his feet, he took of the locality in front. There was the German trench sure enough, with its rows of dirty sandhags, a machine-gun emplacement, and a machine-gun peeping furtively through a loophole. A big bearded German was adjusting the range of the weapon. He looked at Garney, Garney looked at him, and tightened the grip on his^rille. “Ho, me laddiebuck!” said Mike, gripping a bomb and throwing his arm back for the swing. “Have this for yer breakfast.” He Hung the bomb, but did not see it burst. Something hit him in the head at that moment, and he dropped out of the world of conscious things. He lay on the ground for ten minutes, lost to everything. Then he came to himself, and his first sensation was of blood running down his nose. He got to his feet and looked awkwardly round. Nothing to be seen save the trench in

front, the shell-ripped sandbags, and the machine-gun emplacements, and a khaki-clad solldier who was looking over the parapet smoking a cigarette. “Mother of God, they’ve taken the trenches, and I’ve missed all the fun,” said Garney. “Well, I’ll have a smoke.” He looked on the ground for his pipe, and found it,there, smashed to pieces. “There’s no damned fun in this business,” he muttered. “No fightin’ and no smokin’. Hi there!” he called to the soldier in the trench. “Cheero!” came the reply. “Is the lightin’ all done?” asked Mike. “No, indeed!” was the answer. “Over in the right, in a graveyard, there’s big ructions.” “I’m for that arm o’ the glen,” Mike replied, and he rushed off towards the churchyard. He accomplished many deeds not without merit in the churchyard, and in the afternoon he got wounded again. When he was carried in at night, he recounted some of his adventures at the M.O. dressing station. “ ’Twas a Donnybrook all over agin,” he said. “There was me without me pipe, and blood runnin’ all over me face. I got into the graveyard and ’twas like a wasp’s nest with machine gunes. They wor iverywhere, in the graves even among the dead people’s bones, and behind the tombstones. There was wan gun that was goin’ pit, pit, all the time, an’ I marked it out for meself. I could see that place, it was was behind a, tombstone, a purty tombstone, too, with two angels on it, and them kneeling in front of the ‘Sacred Heart.’ I’ve often an’ many a time seen the same stone on the graves in me own country. Well, along I crawls, up to near the place, and then I gets me bomb ready. I draws the pin, stretches out me arm, rises up, throws the bomb, and, God forgive me! 1 blew them two innocent angels oil (be tombstone’. “And the German machine gunners?” asked the M.O. “Begors! they went with Ibe angels,” said Mike Garney.