Sapper Tells His Auntie All About Shrapnel

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From Men, Women, and Guns by "Sapper"

[Sapper was the pseudonym of Herman Cyril McNeile (1888–1937) a Royal Engineer officer who served with distinction in the Great War and began a notable writing career before the Armistice.  He wrote ten novels about his most famous character, detective and war veteran Bulldog Drummond and a good number of other  literary works. A nice biographical sketch of Sapper can be found HERE.] 

Two days ago a dear old aunt of mine asked me to describe to her what shrapnel was like.

"What does it feel like to be shelled?" she demanded. "Explain it to me."

Under the influence of my deceased uncle's most excellent port I did so. Soothed and in that expansive frame of mind induced by the old and bold, I drew her a picture—vivid, startling, wonderful. And when I had finished, the dear old lady looked at me.

"Dreadful!" she murmured. "Did I ever tell you of the terrible experience I had on the front at Eastbourne, when my bath-chair attendant became inebriated and upset me?"

Slowly and sorrowfully I finished the decanter—and went to bed.

But seriously, my masters, it is a hard thing that my aunt asked of me. There are many things worse than shelling—the tea-party you find in progress on your arrival on leave; the utterances of war experts; the non-arrival of the whisky from England. But all of those can be imagined by people who have not suffered;  they have a standard, a measure of comparison. Shelling—no.

The explosion of a howitzer shell near you is a definite, actual fact—which is unlike any other fact in the world, except the explosion of another howitzer shell still nearer. Many have attempted to describe the noise it makes as the most explainable part about it. And then you're no wiser.

Listen. Stand with me at the Menin Gate of Ypres and listen. Through a cutting a train is roaring on its way. Rapidly it rises in a great swelling crescendo as it dashes into the open, and then its journey stops on some giant battlement—stops in a peal of deafening thunder just overhead. The shell has burst, and the echoes in that town of death die slowly away—reverberating like a sullen sea that lashes against a rock-bound coast.

And yet what does it convey to anyone who patronises inebriated bath-chair men?. . .

Similarly—shrapnel! "The Germans were searching the road with 'whizz-bangs.'" A common remark, an ordinary utterance in a letter, taken by fond parents as an unpleasing affair such as the cook giving notice.

Come with me to a spot near Ypres; come, and we will take our evening walk together.

"They're a bit lively farther up the road, sir." The corporal of military police stands gloomily at a cross-roads,[xiii] his back against a small wayside shrine. A passing shell unroofed it many weeks ago; it stands there surrounded by débris—the image of the Virgin, chipped and broken. Just a little monument of desolation in a ruined country, but pleasant to lean against when it's between you and German guns.

Let us go on, it's some way yet before we reach the dug-out by the third dead horse. In front of us stretches a long, straight road, flanked on each side by poplars. In the middle there is pavé. At intervals, a few small holes, where the stones have been shattered and hurled away by a bursting shell and only the muddy grit remains hollowed out to a depth of two feet or so, half-full of water. At the bottom an empty tin of bully, ammunition clips, numbers of biscuits—sodden and muddy. Altogether a good obstacle to take with the front wheel of a car at night.

A little farther on, beside the road, in a ruined, desolate cottage two men are resting for a while, smoking. The dirt and mud of the trenches is thick on them, and one of them is contemplatively scraping his boot with his knife and fork. Otherwise, not a soul, not a living soul in sight; though away to the left front, through glasses, you can see two people, a man and a woman, labouring in the fields. And the only point of interest about them is that between you and them run the two motionless, stagnant lines of men who for months have[xiv] faced one another. Those two labourers are on the other side of the German trenches.

The setting sun is glinting on the little crumbling village two or three hundred yards ahead, and as you walk towards it in the still evening air your steps ring loud on the pavé. On each side the flat, neglected fields stretch away from the road; the drains beside it are choked with weeds and refuse; and here and there one of the gaunt trees, split in two half-way up by a shell, has crashed into its neighbour or fallen to the ground. A peaceful summer's evening which seems to give the lie to our shrine-leaner. And yet, to one used to the peace of England, it seems almost too quiet, almost unnatural.

Suddenly, out of the blue there comes a sharp, whizzing noise, and almost before you've heard it there is a crash, and from the village in front there rises a cloud of dust. A shell has burst on impact on one of the few remaining houses; some slates and tiles fall into the road, and round the hole torn out of the sloping roof there hangs a whitish-yellow cloud of smoke. In quick succession come half a dozen more, some bursting on the ruined cottages as they strike, some bursting above them in the air. More clouds of dust rise from the deserted street, small avalanches of débris cascade into the road, and, above, three or four thick white smoke-clouds drift slowly across the sky.

This is the moment at which it is well—unless time is urgent—to pause and reflect awhile. If you must go on, a détour is strongly to be recommended. The Germans are shelling the empty village just in front with shrapnel, and who are you to interpose yourself between him and his chosen target? But if in no particular hurry, then it were wise to dally gracefully against a tree, admiring the setting sun, until he desists; when you may in safety resume your walk. But—do not forget that he may not stick to the village, and that whizz-bangs give no time. That is why I specified a tree, and not the middle of the road. It's nearer the ditch.

Suddenly, without a second's warning, they shift their target. Whizz-bang! Duck, you blighter! Into the ditch. Quick! Move! Hang your bottle of white wine! Get down! Cower! Emulate the mole! This isn't the village in front now—he's shelling the road you're standing on! There's one burst on impact in the middle of the pavé forty yards in front of you, and another in the air just over your head. And there are more coming—don't make any mistake. That short, sharp whizz every few seconds—the bang! bang! bang! seems to be going on all around you. A thing hums past up in the air, with a whistling noise, leaving a trail of sparks behind it—one of the fuses. Later, the curio-hunter may find it nestling by a turnip. He may have it.

With a vicious thud a jagged piece of shell buries itself in the ground at your feet; and almost simultaneously the bullets from a well-burst one cut through the trees above you and ping against the road, thudding into the earth around. No more impact ones—they've got the range. Our pessimistic friend at the cross-roads spoke the truth; they're quite lively. Everything bursting beautifully above the road about forty feet up. Bitter thought—if only the blighters knew that it was empty save for your wretched and unworthy self cowering in a ditch, with a bottle of white wine in your pocket and your head down a rat-hole, surely they wouldn't waste their ammunition so reprehensibly!

Then, suddenly, they stop, and as the last white puff of smoke drifts slowly away you cautiously lift your head and peer towards the village. Have they finished? Will it be safe to resume your interrupted promenade in a dignified manner? Or will you give them another minute or two? Almost have you decided to do so when to your horror you perceive coming towards you through the village itself two officers. What a position to be discovered in! True, only the very young or the mentally deficient scorn cover when shelling is in progress. But of course, just at the moment when you'd welcome a shell to account for[xvii] your propinquity with the rat-hole, the blighters have stopped. No sound breaks the stillness, save the steps ringing towards you—and it looks silly to be found in a ditch for no apparent reason.

Then, as suddenly as before comes salvation. Just as with infinite stealth you endeavour to step out nonchalantly from behind a tree, as if you were part of the scenery—bang! crash! from in front. Cheer-oh! the village again, the church this time. A shower of bricks and mortar comes down like a landslip, and if you are quick you may just see two black streaks go to ground. From the vantage-point of your tree you watch a salvo of shells explode in, on, or about the temporary abode of those two officers. You realise from what you know of the Hun that this salvo probably concludes the evening hate; and the opportunity is too good to miss. Edging rapidly along the road—keeping close to the ditch—you approach the houses. Your position, you feel, is now strategically sound, with regard to the wretched pair cowering behind rubble heaps. You even desire revenge for your mental anguish when discovery in the rodent's lair seemed certain. So light a cigarette—if you didn't drop them all when you went to ground yourself; if you did—whistle some snappy tune as you stride jauntily into the village.

Don't go too fast or you may miss them; but should you see a head peer from behind a kitchen-range express no surprise. Just—"Toppin' evening, ain't it? Getting furniture for the dug-out—what?" To linger is bad form, but it is quite permissible to ask his companion—seated in a torn-up drain—if the ratting is good. Then pass on in a leisurely manner, but—when you're round the corner, run like a hare. With these cursed Germans, you never know.

Night—and a working-party stretching away over a ploughed field are digging a communication trench. The great green flares lob up half a mile away, a watery moon shines on the bleak scene. Suddenly a noise like the tired sigh of some great giant, a scorching sheet of flame that leaps at you out of the darkness, searing your very brain, so close does it seem; the ping of death past your head; the clatter of shovel and pick next you as a muttered curse proclaims a man is hit; a voice from down the line: "Gawd! Old Ginger's took it. 'Old up, mate. Say, blokes, Ginger's done in!" Aye—it's worse at night.

Shrapnel! Woolly, fleecy puffs of smoke floating gently down wind, getting more and more attenuated, gradually disappearing, while below each puff an oval of ground has been plastered with bullets. And it's when the ground inside the oval is full of men that the damage is done.

Not you perhaps—but someone. Next time—maybe you.