Part 10

The Artillery, on being appealed to, pounded the front German trench for an hour, but made no impression on the trench-mortar. The O.C. of the Asterisks telephoned the Brigade asking what he was to do to stop the torment and destruction, and in reply was told he ought to bomb back at the bomb-throwers. But the Asterisks had already tried that without any success. The distance was too great for hand bombs to reach, and the men appeared to make poor shooting with the rifle grenades.

'Why not try the trench-mortar?' asked the Brigade; to which the harassed Colonel replied conclusively because he didn't possess one, hadn't a bomb for one, and hadn't a man or officer who knew how to use one.

The Brigade apparently learnt this with surprise, and replied vaguely that steps would be taken, and that an officer and detachment of his battalion must receive a course of instruction.

The Colonel replied with spirit that he was glad to hear all this, but in the meantime what was he to do to prevent his battalion being blown piecemeal out of their trenches?

It all ended eventually in the arrival of a trench-mortar and a pile of bombs from somewhere and a very youthful and very much annoyed Artillery subaltern from somewhere else. The Colonel was most enormously relieved by these arrivals, but his high hopes were a good deal dashed by the artilleryman.

That youth explained that he was in effect totally ignorant of trench-mortars and their ways, that he had been shown the thing a week ago, had it explained to him--so far as such a rotten toy could be explained--and had fired two shots from it. However, he said briskly, if off-handedly, he was ready to have a go with it and see what he could do.

The trench-mortar was carried down to the forward trench, and on the way down behind it the youngster discoursed to the O.C. of the Asterisks on the 'awful rot' of a gunner officer being chased off on to a job like this--any knowledge of gunnery being entirely superfluous and, indeed, wasted on such a kid's toy. And the O.C., looking at the trench-mortar being prepared, made a mental remark about 'the mouths of babes' and the wise words thereof.

The weapon is easily described. It was a mere cylinder of cast iron, closed at one end, open at the other, and with a roomy 'touch-hole' at the closed end. The carriage consisted of two uprights on a base, with mortar between them and pointing up at an angle of about forty-five degrees.

The charge was little packets of gunpowder tied up in paper in measured doses. The bomb was a tin-can--an empty jam-tin, mostly--filled with a bursting charge and fragments of metal, and with an inch or so of the fuse protruding.

The piece was loaded by throwing a few packets of powder into the muzzle, poking them with a piece of stick to burst the paper, and carefully sliding the bomb down on top of the charge. A length of fuse was poked into the touch-hole and the end lit, sufficient length being given to allow the lighter to get round the nearest corner before the mortar fired.

The whole thing was too rubbishy and cheaply and roughly made to have been fit for use as a 'kid's toy,' as the subaltern called it. To imagine it being used as a weapon of precision in a war distinguished above all others as one of scientifically perfect weapons and implements was ridiculous beyond words.

The Colonel watched the business of loading and laying with amazement and consternation.

'Is it possible to--er--hit anything with that?' he asked.

'Well, more or less,' said the youthful subaltern doubtfully. 'There's a certain amount of luck about it, I believe.'

'But why on earth,' said the Colonel, beginning to wax indignant, 'do they send such a museum relic here to fight a reasonably accurate and decidedly destructive mortar?'

The subaltern chuckled.

'That's not any museum antique,' he said. 'That's a Mortar, Trench, Mark Something or other--the latest, the most modern weapon of the kind in the British Army. It was made, I believe, in the Royal Arsenal, and it is still being made and issued for use in the field--the Engineers collecting the empty jam-pots and converting them to bombs. They've only had four or five months, y'see, to evolve a---- look out, sir! Here's one of theirs!'

The resulting explosion flung a good deal of mud over the parapet on to the Colonel and the subaltern, and raised the youth to wrath.

'Beasts!' he said angrily, and poked a length of fuse in the touch-hole. 'Get away round the traverse!' he ordered the mob near him. 'And you'd better go, too, sir--as I will when I've touched her off. Y'see, she's just as liable to explode as not, and, if she does, she'd make more mess in this trench than I can ever hope she will in a German one.'

The Colonel retired round the nearest traverse, and next moment the lieutenant plunged round after him just as the mortar went off with a resounding bang. Every man in the trench watched the bomb rise, twirling and twisting, and fall again, turning end over end towards the German trench.

At about the moment he judged it should burst, the lieutenant poked his head up over the parapet, but bobbed down hurriedly as a couple of bullets sang past his ear.

'Pretty nippy lot across there!' he said. 'I must find a loophole to observe from. And p'r'aps you'd tell some of your people to keep up a brisk fire on that parapet to stop 'em aiming too easy at me. Now we'll try another.'

At the next bang from the opposite trench he risked another quick peep over and this time ducked down with an exclamation of delight.

'I've spotted him.' he said. 'Just caught the haze of his smoke. Down the trench about fifty yards. So we'll try trail-left a piece--or would if this old drain-pipe had a trail.'

He relaid his mortar carefully, and fired again. Having no sights or arrangement whatever for laying beyond a general look over the line of its barrel and a pinch more or less of powder in the charge, it can only be called a piece of astounding good luck that the jam-pot bomb fell almost fairly on the top of the German mortar. There was a most satisfying uproar and eddying volume of smoke and eruption of earth, and the lieutenant stared through a loophole dumb-founded with delight.

'I'll swear,' he said, 'that our old Plum-and-Apple pot never made a burst that big. I do believe it must have flopped down on the other fellow and blown up one or two of his bombs same time. I say, isn't that the most gorgeous good luck? Well, good enough to go on with. We'll have a chance for some peaceful practice now?'

Apparently, since the other mortar ceased to fire, it must have been put out of action, and the lieutenant spent a useful hour pot-shotting at the other trench.

The shooting was, to say the least, erratic. With apparently the same charge and the same tilt on the mortar, one bomb would drop yards short and another yards over. If one in three went within three yards of the trench, if one in six fell in the trench, it was, according to the lieutenant, a high average, and as much as any man had a right to expect. But at the end of the hour, the Asterisks, who had been hugely enjoying the performance, and particularly the cessation of German bombs, were horrified to hear a double report from the German trench, and to see two dark blobs fall twinkling from the sky.