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  HENRY RUFFIN AND ANDRÉ TUDESQ

  THE
  SQUARE JAW

  [Illustration]

  THOMAS NELSON & SONS, LTD
  35 & 36 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.
  EDINBURGH      NEW YORK      PARIS

  Price One Shilling




  THE SQUARE JAW

  BY
  HENRY RUFFIN AND ANDRÉ TUDESQ.

  _Translated from the French._

  THOMAS NELSON & SONS,
  35 AND 36, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, E.C.
  EDINBURGH.      NEW YORK.      PARIS.




TABLE OF CONTENTS.


  PART I.--BATTLE OF THE ANCRE.

  CHAPTER                                     PAGE

  I.--THE IMPROMPTU VICTORY                      7

  II.--IN FRONT OF THE MUNICH TRENCH            11

  III.--THE REAL SUPERMEN                       14

  IV.--SURPRISES OF A MOONLIT FROSTY NIGHT      17

  V.--THE BATTLE REOPENS                        20

  VI.--ON THE EDGE OF THE FRAY                  23

  EPILOGUE                                      24


  PART II.--THE SQUARE JAWS.

  I.--THE WELDING OF FRENCH AND BRITISH         31

  II.--HOW THE AUSTRALIAN CONTINGENT VOTED IN
  FRANCE IN FACE OF THE ENEMY                   35

  III.--BOELCKE'S LAND OF PROMISE               40

  IV.--THE SQUARE JAW                           45

  V.--THE RELIEF                                49


  PART III.--THE ARMIES OF THE NORTH.

  I.--THE PREPARATION OF THE CANADIANS          56

  II.--ARRAS, THE WOUNDED TOWN                  60

  III.--THE GROUND OF HEROIC DEEDS              63

  IV.--A DINNER OF GENERALS                     66

  V.--WAR IN THE BLACK COUNTRY                  68

  VI.--THE ART OF SAVING                        71

  VII.--"BROTHERS IN ARMS"                      73


  PART IV.--IMPRESSIONS OF "NO MAN'S LAND."

  I.--AS IN A PICTURE OF EPINAL                 79

  II.--A HERO AFTER THE MANNER OF ROLAND        81

  III.--MIDNIGHT IN THE FRONT LINE              84

  IV.--THROUGH THE MINE AREA                    87

  V.--THE MENACE OF THE GOLDEN VIRGIN           91

  VI.--"RONNY"                                  94

  VII.--PIPING OUT THE DAY                      96

  VIII.--Y GULLY                                98

  IX.--CHRISTMAS NIGHT IN "NO MAN'S LAND"      100




PART I.

THE BATTLE OF THE ANCRE.




CHAPTER I.

THE IMPROMPTU VICTORY.


                                   The Ancre Front, 13th November.

You read the reports. The names of the places that have been taken,
the calculations of the gains, the numbers of the prisoners, leave you
cold. Words! words! It is on the field of battle, amidst the thunder
of the guns and the magic glow of fires, that one should read the
bulletins of victory.

This evening a heady, irresistible joy took possession of the Army. The
prisoners were pouring in. The men were singing in their quarters. Upon
a front 3-1/2 miles wide and nearly 1-1/2 deep our Allies had broken
the German lines on both sides of the Ancre.

They have been giving me details of the battle. From hour to hour,
here, in the midst of the troops, I am being told the incidents of the
fighting. A risky privilege!

The despatches which come to us; the despatch riders who, at the utmost
speed of their motor-cycles, bring us reports through the ruts and mud
of the roads; the messages of the telegraph--everything has assumed a
heroic quality. A feverish joy quivers in every face. Even the bell of
the telephone follows, strangely, the measure of our heart-beats.

"We owe this victory to our quickness," a Colonel tells me. "This
battle was an _impromptu_." The word is a picture. It is absolutely
right.

At six o'clock--that is to say, in the grey light of the
morning--after a short but annihilating artillery preparation, the
divisions posted in the first line dashed forward through the fog and
drizzle. The objective was three villages--Beaumont-Hamel and Beaucourt
on the North bank of the river, and, on the South, Saint Pierre-Divion.

Let me tell you something of the country and its difficulties.

Swamps, soggy undulations formed by the trenches and the convoys, a
wet, clayey soil, into which one sinks to the waist. Mud everywhere.
Slime everywhere. One must slide down the funnels and holes that the
shells have made. Thus the waves of the assault gather for their onset.
The Germans had constructed defences formed of five lines of trenches,
each alternated with at least three rows of barbed wire entanglements.
The _chevaux de frise_ and other obstacles covered, in places, a space
over 200 yards wide.

On the one hand and on the other the banks of the Ancre ran up into
bluffs like buttresses. Since his failure of the 1st of July, the enemy
has cut among these natural protections deep trenches which wind along
parallel to the course of the river. He has also set up on the <DW72>s
powerful machine-gun emplacements and blockhouses with mortars.

The English advance went like clockwork. The secret had been well kept;
the evening before, the troops of this sector were quite unaware that
an advance was to take place.

An absolute determination inspired both officers and men. The result
of the attack was never in doubt. The trenches were taken by storm,
together with those who manned them. It was a veritable harvest of men.
The fourth line was taken at the point of the bayonet in _eighteen
minutes_.

At eight in the morning we attacked the outskirts of the three
villages. Beaumont-Hamel was the first to be taken, with its garrison.
Before Beaucourt we were brought to a halt by machine-gun fire. Saint
Pierre-Divion was outflanked. The artillery increased its range and cut
short all counter-attacks.

[Illustration: 1. IN BEAUMONT-HAMEL.]

By nine o'clock the objective was gained with complete success. The fog
grew thicker. The fire of the heavy guns and the barrage fires followed
one another without pause.

Through twilight gloom and the mists of low-lying clouds monstrous
lightnings flicker across this spectral landscape. The smallest hill is
a Sinai. In a leap of nearly 1-1/2 miles the batteries have advanced at
the same pace as the troops, taking such cover as Heaven sends them.
All this sector smokes and roars to its farthest extremities. It is as
if there were dragons squatting everywhere by the hundred and spitting
flame. Fires break out, blushing palely through the fog. Stores of
munitions explode behind the villages. It is like the brute thunder of
the earthquake.

The fiercest fighting developed at Beaumont-Hamel, where the ground
is full of great caves that run into one another. In these there was
plenty of room for four companies.

Next, the centre of interest shifted to the South bank of the
Ancre, where Y Gully commands the passage of the river and the road
to Beaucourt. This ravine, upon which three months' work had been
spent, was a positive arsenal. Every 20 yards along it there was a
machine-gun. The Germans believed it to be impregnable. This evening
the English had their own guns in it.

Victory everywhere! Three villages taken; more than 2,000 prisoners
counted already! I have just been to see them. They are encamped along
the edge of an immense bivouac. All about them the heaviest of the
guns spit out, minute by minute, their delicate ton-weight mouthfuls.
The prisoners are identified, questioned, and searched. A dazed stupor
is all that their terrified faces declare. They have suffered very
little damage, for most of them have been surprised in their caves
and dug-outs. Many of them are still wearing their helmets. Their
officers have accepted their bad fortune, one would say, gladly. There
is nothing of bravado in their carriage. The Tommies surround this
encampment curiously. With a friendliness that is very touching they
offer, some cigarettes, others food. Generosity on the one side; a
growing astonishment on the other. The German soldiers, nearly all
Silesians, accept these things with a sort of childish gratitude.

The motor-ambulances move here, there and everywhere over the clayey
fields, where the wheels of the ammunition wagons have drawn mighty
furrows, like those that peaceful toil once made here. One hardly
sees the faces of these men. They are blanks, for their thoughts are
elsewhere, within. On the other hand, one's attention is seized by such
things as their feet, mere lumps of clay, that at times the red touch
of a swathed wound enlivens. Motor-'buses--as in London--run upon the
roads. Those who are lightly wounded crowd to the top. One of them
wears a pointed helmet, where shines the two-headed eagle. Others hang
the Iron Cross upon their caps. They are all laughing and joking like
schoolboys.

The road to Bapaume, to the north, is almost all free. From to-day
begins, on this side, the siege of that town, which the Germans have
converted into a stronghold. All over the plain the English are
lighting camp-fires: and in perfect safety, since the enemy's line has
retired about 1-1/2 miles. The skirl of bagpipes, the scream of fifes,
the choruses of the men, rise into the foggy night. It proves the truth
of the saying: "To live truly is to live perilously."

Victory! And the battle goes on.




CHAPTER II.

IN FRONT OF THE MUNICH TRENCH.


                                    Beaumont-Hamel, 15th November.

That two-hour tramp through a few kilometres of trenches was a
heart-breaking business. We floundered through holes, we were swallowed
up in bogs, while the mud that fell from the parapets gradually spread
itself over our oilskins. A steel helmet becomes wonderfully heavy
after an hour or so, and a dizzy headache soon tormented us, from the
constant right-angled turns which we were obliged to make, like so many
slaves at a cornmill. But what a reward has been ours since our arrival!

Here we are, seated at the horizontal loophole of a quite new
observation post, in the front line, in the very trench from which, the
day before yesterday, the English launched their attack.

In front, towards the left, is Beaumont-Hamel. Out of this heap of
rubbish start up three-cornered bits of wall, which give to these ruins
the look of a dwarf village. On the hillside a mangled copse looks like
those guileless charcoal strokes which one sees in a child's drawing.
To the right--Beaucourt. Here the ruin is absolute. I have hunted in
vain for any trace of man's handiwork. Even the dust of the stones has
blown away.

A few hundred yards ahead of us the men have just rushed forward. With
rifles held high they spring from the parapet into the open. They look
like an army of ants, that now moves along in a stream, now closes
together like a vice, now marks time, now plunges into vast funnels,
and again, at racing speed, surges up the gentle <DW72>. The barbed-wire
entanglements cover acres of ground; they are the eleventh line of
the German defences. In many places the wires are so closely bunched
together that the balls cannot pass through them.

At least a brigade is engaged. One can see the company leaders quite
plainly. The shells are bursting everywhere, throwing up furious
fountains of black smoke with which bits of earth and iron are mingled.
The rolling clouds of the shrapnel seem to frame one regiment.

Ah! Bad luck! That one was well timed which burst over there on the
right, just above the company that was lying down there. The damage
must have been serious. Men lie on the ground who will never pick
themselves up again. A cloud, the colour of absinthe, hangs sullenly
over those little khaki spots.

On the right, on the left, in front, behind, with a disquieting skill
and precision, the Germans pile barrage upon barrage. Meanwhile,
without a pause, the troops advance across this hell. I can follow,
with the naked eye, every movement of an active young officer, who
is wearing a light yellow overcoat, and who is charging at the head
of his company, with a cane under his left arm and a revolver in his
right hand as calmly as if he were strolling along Regent Street or
Piccadilly.

The human wave, breaking through the barrage, disappears suddenly in
the earth. It is as if a chasm had opened to swallow all these men
at a gulp. And now, listen! For the gunfire is punctuated with sharp
detonations. It sounds like a shrill drumming, swelled by furious
shouts and cries of agony. The Tommies have entered the enemy's
lines. After a short period of bombing, they advance, yard by yard,
with the bayonet. Round the blockhouses the machine-guns rattle. We
listen anxiously to these thousand voices of the attack. Every man has
vanished. The field of vision is empty. Only the variegated smokes of
the different shells spread themselves slowly abroad. The uncertainty
is unbearable. Half an hour later we learn from the telephone that
the attack has succeeded. The brigade has done its work. We have just
witnessed, on the north bank of the Ancre, the capture of an important
trench, or rather redoubt, nearly 450 yards away from Beaumont--the
Munich Trench.

[Illustration: 2. PRISONERS.]

Here again there has been a famous haul of prisoners. More than 300
unwounded soldiers have been compelled to surrender. In a short time
the first of them cross in front of our observation post. They are
haggard, covered with mud, and their eyes are the eyes of trapped
beasts. Two of them, converted into impromptu stretcher-bearers, are
carrying a wounded officer on a stretcher that is soaked in blood.

And now the battle increases everywhere in violence. We hear that
on this side of Beaucourt some strong reserves, collected there by
the Germans, have just been surrounded and taken prisoners. A whole
brigade staff has fallen into the hands of the English. More than 5,000
prisoners have been counted already. It will take at least two days to
count all that have been taken. A genuine victory!

The "tanks" have played an honourable part in the battle, and I have
just seen two of them at work. My impressions may be summed up in these
words: a huge amazement and satisfaction.

One of them, which has been christened _The Devil's Delight_, did
marvels at Beaucourt. This deliberate leviathan, having placed itself
boldly at the head of the advancing flood of men, took up its position
at the entrance of the ruined village. At first the Germans fled.
Then, one by one, they came back. With machine-guns, bombs, rifles and
mortars they endeavoured to pierce its double shell. Nothing availed.
Squatted on its tail, the terrific tank lorded it there like a king
on his horse. It made no objection whatever to being approached. Some
sappers tried to place bombs under it, to blow it sky high. Inside it
the crew shammed dead. The Germans took heart. Ten, twenty, thirty
men, armed with screw-jacks and mallets laboured to overthrow it.
But what could even two battalions have accomplished against this
patient mastodon, whose skin was steel and whose weight was 800 tons?
A colonel, mad with rage, fired the eight barrels of his revolver at
it, point-blank. If the tank could have laughed it must have burst with
delight. Its sense of humour is a strictly warlike one.

After a full quarter of an hour of silence the Germans, believing
that the crew had been destroyed and that the monster was helpless,
surrounded it boldly and in considerable numbers. Thereupon, unmasking
its machine-guns, and opening fire from its sides, the terrible
creature began to hack them in bits, mow them down in heaps, drill them
full of holes and slay them by the dozen.

A giant miller, grinding death!

An hour later, when the larger part of the English troops succeeded
in reaching Beaucourt, they found the Germans, dead and dying, piled
around the tank. The tank says little, but to the point.

Three cheers for Mademoiselle Devil's Delight!




CHAPTER III.

THE REAL SUPERMEN.

  "_We are consolidating our positions._"

                              (English Communiqué, 16th November.)


Here is a story.

Some time ago, on the North bank of the Ancre, in the Beaumont-Hamel
Sector, everyone was affected with a curious boredom. Nothing happened:
very little artillery fire; not so much as a pretence at an attack.
It was a dead calm. The bombs were all asleep. Muscles grew slack.
Enthusiasm staled. Boredom, that worst misery of trench life, reigned
supreme.

One evening this slackness among the troops--and it was as bad on one
side as on the other--produced a curious result. Among the Germans,
a homesick Silesian began to sing some of the carols of his own
country. His voice rose freshly into